


Boldness and Impossible Things

by TenSixths



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Episode AU: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, F/M, Family, Fluff, Romance, don't leave your valuables unattended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 51,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21983785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSixths/pseuds/TenSixths
Summary: When Joan considered it practically, enclosing one's entire consciousness in a common fob watch was not only unbelievable, it was also rather careless. As strange as the story was, however, that carelessness meant that John Smith was still here and the hopes Joan had only just begun to admit to herself might not be so impossible after all.Vignettes of the adventures that might had been if the fob watch simply went missing.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor | John Smith/Joan Redfern
Comments: 37
Kudos: 17





	1. November 1913

**Author's Note:**

> Write historical fiction, the muse said. Write it on top of all your other projects, it said. It'll be fun, it said.  
> In my last rewatch, I wondered what these two would go through (outside of alien invasions and biological reconfiguration) if everything had gone as they had hoped. Lo and behold, nothing ever goes as hoped for.  
> I hope to post new chapters every Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

Quiet English villages were not supposed to be war zones. Especially when the bombs that fell were from an entirely different world.

Timothy ran along the ridge above the Mercer farm. The watch in his pocket whispered into his mind, begging to be opened, to be let free. The noise of it almost drowned out the bombs landing in the village below him.

He was not alone out here. The night was filled with families fleeing. Two were ahead of him, laboring under the weight of a few belongings and young children. They cowered each time a bomb came close, landing in the forest beside them.

Tim had no such worries for himself. He had seen his future and knew it stretched beyond tonight. For others though, the carnage could only stop when the the Doctor open the fob watch. The watch itself told him this was true and pulled him onward to the place where the Doctor was hidden away.

To pass a family ahead of him, he ran along the very edge of the ridge. Pebbles knocked loose at his steps tumbled down the hill beside him.

He did not stop to help. The best help lay dormant in the body of his unassuming teacher.

There was another bomb, nearly on them now. The family behind Tim cried out as the ground shook and gave way beneath his feet. He stumbled for a moment as he tried to catch his balance on the cascading earth, but he was already falling. He slipped sideways, coming down on his shoulder hard, before rolling and rolling down the hill, the far off flashes and immediate pain swirling together until he fainted.

\- - -

When he woke again, it was raining and there were no whispers in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought about calling this story "Don't Leave Your Valuables Unattended." Unfortunately that didn't quite fit the mood I was going for.


	2. November 1913

They sat in stiff silence around the table, no longer flinching each time a bomb crashed outside.

“I have to go,” John said again, though he made no move to rise. “People are dying because of me.”

“No, people are dying because of the Doctor. Besides,” Joan glanced toward Martha, “she’s right. Like she said, without the watch, they don’t want you. You can’t go.”

“So I’m just supposed to sit here then? Is that it?”

Martha looked as if she was about to cry, and Joan felt a rush of pity for her despite the fact she was trying to take John away. "What would this Doctor do if he were here?" Joan asked, trying to keep her voice even.

"That's just it! I don't know. He would...he would run right to them. He would make it up as he went, but he's brilliant so it would work."

"We can't fight them," said Joan. "We're not even armed."

"We can help people get to safety," John said. They both looked to him, but he was intently studying the table top. "We can't stop them, but I won't cower here anymore. Let's go save who we can."

Without a thought, Joan reached out for his hand. It did not encompass all she felt for him, but it was all she was able to do in the moment. John squeezed her hand back, and across the table, even Martha had the barest shadow of a smile.

"Where can we take people?" she asked Joan. "Somewhere safe from bombs?"

"I told people to evacuate the village," said John. "Where would they have gone?"

"The woods most likely, or farms."

"Then they should be safe for now. Let us go find anyone who was not evacuated. We can bring them here."

"What about those scarecrows?" Martha asked. "They can't be killed."

"Burn them," Joan said, the idea striking her all at once. "They're straw."

"That could work."

"There'll be kerosene in the barn for torches.” Joan rose, pleased to have a plan and a task. Martha was already halfway to the door. “John?” He was still sitting at the table, staring at the hand Joan released, but not seeing it. "Martha, can you give us a moment, please?" Joan didn't bother to watch how Martha bristled at the dismissal. She had said Joan's thoughts did not matter when it came to Martha's Doctor, but there was no Doctor. There was only John Smith and he was not Martha's.

When she heard the door snap shut, Joan took John's hand in both of hers. "What is it?"

"I'm beginning to see the appeal of this Doctor."

"What?"

"I am powerless and weak. I'm not even real, just a story."

She jostled his hand and his gaze slowly came around to fix on her. When she had his attention, she said levelly, "You are not powerless or weak. You told me that ordinary actions could make all the difference. We are going to go to the village and save people tonight. Maybe not everyone, but this Doctor risked people's lives by coming here. That doesn't sound powerful to me."

A bomb crashed through the trees outside and John winced in the orange glow of the explosion.

"Come," she said, pulling him with her as she stood again. "For now we will be brave. Tomorrow, when everyone's safe, we can confront the idea that the universe is not as small as we imagined."

John allowed himself to be led to the door without a word. For his sanity as much as hers, Joan was thankful. She was not ready to pursue the thoughts of aliens or time travel or the idea that the man she was beginning to love was a figment of someone else's imagination. Nor did she have them time. People needed saving. It was best to accept these revelations as fact and ponder them when she next had a moment alone. If she ever did.

They made torches out of cloth scraps and wood. There were guns hung on the wall, but none of them made to take one. Joan couldn't stop picturing dozens of students with no business killing anyone trying to hold a gun steady enough to take a shot.

They retraced their path back into the village and found a war zone. It was deserted as far as they could see, and quiet when the bombs weren't echoing. There was hardly a building left standing though. Only rubble and flames.

“We should split up, I think,” Joan said. “Call if you find anything.”

Joan took the left turning on her own, clambering over the remains of someone’s front parlor where it ran together with the grocer’s stockroom. Why had they not stopped bombing yet? The village was destroyed. Surely even their code of honor dictated they stop.

She lifted the furniture that she could, recognizing she was unlikely to find people or bodies hiding behind the things she was able to lift. It would be the larger pieces, chests and entire walls she was too weak to shift that would have crushed and trapped people. There was a definition of useless if John mentioned it again. At least he could move a table.

“Hello?” she called as she went. Shoving aside a half-hung door, she found herself peering into a cellar. “Hello?”

The blackness sent only silence back to her. She went onwards.

Joan found her first body in what was left of the next house. It was a young woman laid out on her back. From what Joan could see, her skin was unmarred and her glassy eyes peaceful, but she lay in a pool of blood. Joan tiptoed through it so she could close the woman’s eyes. She did not turn her over to see the wound.

As she tried and failed to move a toppled dresser, she found herself crying. Who killed young women so senselessly? These were not soldiers, or soldiers’ homes.

A rhythmic tapping broke through her grief. For a moment she listened, the tapping coming from the pipes so she couldn’t locate the source. She rapped three times on the nearest wall. The tapping went silent. Then, in answer, _tap tap tap_.

They kept that up, a strange sort of conversation, until Joan found the way to the cellar. By placing her feet against the wall and her back against the trunk that blocked the door, she was able to shift the trunk enough to open the door.

Her torch illuminated stairs into the murky darkness. “Hello?” she called as she stepped onto the first step. “Is someone here?”

“Help! Help me, please.”

Joan took the rest of stairs at a run. At the bottom, she found a small cellar filled with old furniture and shelves of food, mostly unharmed.

“Where are you?”

“Here. Here I am.”

Her light finally fell upon a young boy, about thirteen, sitting against the wall. He shielded his eyes from her torch as she ran to him.

“Are you alright?” she asked, reaching for him. “Are you hurt? It’s Sam, isn’t it?"

The boy nodded.

"Where are your parents?"

"I don't know. I was-" He let out a sob. "I was playing, and there was a bang and it went dark. I’ve been calling. Why didn’t anyone come?"

“You’re alright.” Joan wrapped him in her arms. “It’s going to be alright now. Do you know who I am?” When the boy nodded, she said, “I’m going to take you to find your parents now, alright? Can you come with me?”

With the boy’s hand in hers, she led them up the stairs and out onto the street. She couldn’t do any more searching as long as Sam was with her, so she went back towards the spot where she’d separated from John and Martha.

“John?” she called. “Martha?”

“Over here!” came Martha’s reply from the shadow of a crushed building.

When Joan reached her, Martha was crouched over a gentleman, binding a tourniquet around his thigh.

“I’ve stopped the bleeding, and he should be alright,” she explained without being asked. “A bit of shrapnel, but it missed the femoral. He’s got a concussion too, so he has to stay awake. We’ll need the Doctor to help us carry him. Have you seen him?”

“Not since we all split up.”

“When was the last time you heard a bomb?”

Everyone went silent as if they’d simply been talking too loudly to hear an explosion, but Joan saw Martha realizing the truth as she herself did.

John had gone to the Family.

“I knew the Doctor was in there somewhere,” said Martha with a grin as she rose.

“He'll get himself killed. What do we do?"

"You wait here with these two and I'll go after him. I'll send help if I find anyone on the way."

"Martha, wait, you-"

But she was already halfway down the street. Joan turned a reassuring smile to her two charges.

“What are they?” asked the man. “Foreigners?”

Joan shrugged her shoulders. She was beginning to understand, she thought, but she was not yet ready to explain.

“Is the army coming to help us?”

She shrugged again, adding a murmured, “I don’t know.”

They waited the rest of the time in silence. Joan had nothing to say. A young man came with a cart to help them after an hour. Joan went with the gentleman and Sam to the hospital, but she didn’t stay. She left before anyone could see her nurse’s apron and ask her for help with the other wounded.

There had been no bombs for hours. Where was John? Had Martha found him? If they were together and safe, she did not know where they would go. Perhaps back to the Cartwright house to wait for her, or maybe the school. The machine, the blue box Joan couldn’t now remember the name of, was at the school. If Martha were to take John away, if they were going to flee, they would go there. So Joan went to the school. She did not know what she would say if she met them there. If he wanted to go.

The straw creatures still guarded the box. Joan didn’t hesitate. She went to each creature, not caring how they backed away from her torch. They were clumsy and slow. When the fire touched them, they burned. It was immediate. The dry straw crackled and flashed and they were gone. One after another until Joan stood alone by the strange machine.


	3. November 1913

The sky was turning light by the time John and Martha came through the gates. Martha nearly skipped alongside John, laughing. John spoke quietly to her and Joan fixed her smile into place. She promised herself she would not cry.

“Is it done?” she asked when they reached her.

John’s eyes moved from her to the box behind her as the small smile fell from his face. “Yes.”

“Are they dead?”

“No. Yes. I didn’t kill them.”

“How?”

“I told them they’d have to come with me to get the watch and Martha blew up their ship. The blast killed Baines. They...just gave up after that.”

“Gave up?”

“They didn’t seem to want to go on without one of the others, and they left.”

“If what the Doctor said is right,” Martha added, “they should be dead in less than a month. Like mayflies.”

_Good_ , Joan thought. For a moment, she chided herself for so cruel a thought, but she remembered the fear they caused this place, caused her. _I hope it’s painful._

John stepped away from the two of them, chasing after some thought, so Joan asked Martha, “How did you destroy the ship?”

“I just thought more about what the Doctor would have done. He’s the sort of person to press a button first and worry about what it does later. So I pressed every button I could find.”

“She was brilliant,” John said distantly. He was circling around the machine, giving it a wide berth. Next to Joan, Martha nearly vibrated with energy, leaning side to side to catch a glimpse of John as if she wanted to see the exact expression on his face when his past memories clicked. 

"Like in my dreams," John added distractedly when he emerged from his circumnavigation.

Martha’s nervous energy evaporated. The expectation faded as she thrust her shoulders back and stomped to his side. "No. _This_ ,” she motioned at him, “John Smith is a dream. _This_ ,” she knocked on the side of the TARDIS, “is real. The Doctor is real. Just...Here, just come inside. You'll see." Martha took John's hand and tried to lead him to the door, but he pulled away. With a frustrated noise, Martha pulled a key from around her neck and fitted it into the lock.

Joan watched in horrid fascination. Her rational mind told her the inside of a wooden box should look like the inside of a wooden box. The events of the previous night suggested otherwise. As Martha pushed open the door, Joan found herself leaning slightly forward, straining to see.

Martha stepped back. Past her, Joan caught a glimpse of light and open space. She spun away. Too much.

Guns and aliens and time travel and living scarecrows and so much death. She would not look at what impossible thing lay inside this box, this TARDIS. She wanted no part of that life. That was for people like Martha and her alien, not widowed country nurses.

John stepped into her vision, still looking past her. His fascination seemed caught between curious wonder and fearful distrust. Funny how quickly she had learned his expressions.

"Come on, Doctor. You've got to snap out of it. We’ve to go home."

John stared at Martha.

"Please, I need the Doctor. I want to go home."

"I'm-I'm sorry. I'm not him. I can't help you."

"Just go inside and try to fly it. Maybe it will come back to you." She stepped forward to take his hand again, but he stepped back. "Just try,” she insisted.

"Why do I need to die for him? Why can't I be the one to live?"

"Please, Doctor!"

Joan felt her heart break a little for Martha as John said harshly, "Stop calling me that. I'm not him." If it was true, if what she glimpsed in the TARDIS was not an illusion and John was a story invented by the madman who flew the box, then Martha was a long ways from the world she knew. And the person she trusted to take her home couldn't remember her. Joan went, on instinct, go comfort her.

"No, you're not him." Martha dodged Joan as she slammed the door of the TARDIS closed and locked it again. "You're _not_ him. I can't believe you lost that watch." She stormed away, back toward the school gates. Almost there, she turned back and shouted, "The Doctor wouldn’t choose something just because it was safe!”

They waited in the morning shadow of the TARDIS until Martha was out of sight and birds were chirping.

“John?” When there was no reply, she came to stand in front of him. “John, what is it?”

His teeth were gritted and his eyes shining. She swept the hair off his forehead where it had fallen forward. As she brought her hand down, he reached up and held it there, her palm pressed against his cheek, and closed his eyes.

“I want to be John Smith. Haven’t I earned that?”

“Yes, John.”

“To be safe and-” His eyes opened. “-not lonely. Why shouldn’t I have that?”

"I don't think you have a choice. Without that watch, I think you have to stay as John Smith."

She didn't see the tear fall, yet there was wetness between her fingers.

"Did you want to change?" she asked. Her voice was steady as she said the words, but she felt dangerously close to tears herself.

"It wouldn't be me, would it?"

"No, not really."

"I don't want to die."

"Then stay." She rubbed her thumb along his cheekbone. "We'll find another way to help Martha get home."


	4. December 1913

The parents descended on the school to collect their sons. There was no headmaster, but there were still teachers around to answer the parents’ distraught and furious questions. When the men's answers failed, the parents turned to Joan.

No, no boys were injured. Yes, the headmaster and a teacher had unfortunately been killed. No, there was no further danger. Yes, the school would open again for the start of the next term. Mr. John Smith and his maid saved the school from danger.

So often did she repeat the words that she heard them in her head all through dinner and as she lay in bed waiting for sleep.

Yes. No. Unfortunate death. Everyone else is safe.

When the boys were sent home, it was on to the village. There had been deaths there too, though not as many as there might have been. While the fighting centered on the school, many of the villagers heeded the warning and the stories of murders and run for it. The Family destroyed an all but deserted village.

They buried the dead. They reunited children with parents. They sorted through what remained of their belongings. They began to clean. Women collected debris in the street. Men rebuilt houses and shops.

There were questions in the village too, but those usually went unanswered. Joan and Martha and John were there, helping, and occasionally receiving questions from those who heard the Family was after John Smith. In return, they said only that the four people had inexplicably gone crazy, and John Smith and his servant stopped them.

John tended to leave out that last bit though.

He was always about, being helpful where he could, but distant. Martha seemed to make him nervous and he avoided her. Joan thought she might be making him nervous too because he was as unsure around her as he had been in those first days. He had not changed, he was still John Smith, yet it was as if he was a new person all the same.

In the face of his reticence, Joan sought out Martha. The woman had abandoned any pretense of being a servant and was living in an unused teacher’s rooms at the school. Anyone who complained about her taking the space was verbally chastised, be they man or woman, master or servant. Joan heard it sometimes while walking through the corridors, and couldn't help but admire Martha's outspokenness.

When Martha opened her door to Joan's knock, her eyes narrowed. "What?" Suddenly she pulled the door further open. "Is it the Doctor? Is he hurt?"

"No, nothing like that. It's...I only wondered if you would like to go for a drink. The pub’s serving again. Of course it was the first thing they rebuilt. I rather thought we could use a break."

"A drink? It wouldn’t hurt your reputation to be seen with someone who looks like me?"

Joan felt herself blush and she bowed her head. She supposed, out of all the things she had seen this past month, the idea that the young woman before her might be a doctor was not the most unbelievable. For Martha to be annoyed that someone doubted her because of her appearance was perhaps most believable of all. Joan did not consider herself a suffragette by any means, but she could not deny the spark of irritation when one of the teachers condescended to her.

“I think it could only help my reputation,” Joan said softly, “to be seen with a doctor.”

They didn’t talk much on the way outside of brief, _No, after you_ ’s at the doors. Only when they sat did Joan say, “I _am_ sorry, Martha. The time you and he are from...Whenever you speak, I see I must expand my view of things. Your time is very different, is it not?”

“In some ways. In others, things are the same.”

“I’m afraid my imagination is no match for it. All those stories in John’s journal, I don’t know if I will ever believe them, even after everything I’ve seen.”

"But that's just it," cried Martha. "There's so much out there and so many people depend on the Doctor."

"Can you change him without the fob watch?"

"I don't think so."

"You still don't know where it went?"

"Tim came to find me the day after everything. He said he had taken it and when he was bringing it back, he fell down a hill and lost it. We looked everywhere on that hill, but we couldn't find it. Tim says he can hear it speaking to him, that's why he took it. He couldn't hear anything while we were looking." Martha swiped at her eyes. “He’s in there though, the Doctor. I just know it.” She nodded to herself and took a drink.

For her part, Joan stayed silent. Their peace was new and fragile. Still, no matter how much peace they shared, Joan knew they would never agree on John, yet always be connected by him. They loved two different men who could not love them back at the same time. She sipped at her own beer.

“Course,” said Martha with false cheer, “it would be easier to convince him if he wasn’t ignoring me.”

“He has been rather distant.” Joan paused a moment. That was a fact she hadn’t admitted to herself. It was surprising to hear it addressed to Martha. “Time, I think. He needs time to adjust.”

“Yes,” Martha agreed, “the Doctor will come back. We just need to give him time.”

Joan was thirteen years and one dead husband away from the naive young woman who saw only good in the world. Now she was practical. She had sought happiness in self-determination and contented herself with it. She had never expected happiness in love again, especially not with a love that struck so deep into her heart as her feelings for John did. Companionship, maybe. Now that she had the chance again, she would hold onto it, regardless of Martha or any alien. Regardless of anyone but herself and the person she loved. Until John Smith expressed a desire to flee to the stars, she would heed no one else who said that’s where he belonged.

\- - -

As if he knew she had called him ‘distant,’ John was at her door that evening. Having nothing to do and finding herself too tired to read, Joan decided to simply go to bed, though had only gotten as far as undoing her hair when she heard the knock.

He seemed surprised to find her standing there when she opened the door, but recovered quickly enough. "Um, yes, hello."

"Good evening," she replied. "Would you like to come in? I could call for- Well, I suppose there's no one I can call for tea at the moment. All the servants are still gone."

John didn't notice the nerves behind her babbling. He sat on her sofa, but his mind was miles away. She adjusted a chair so she could sit opposite him.

"The school is nearly ready to open again," she said to fill the silence. "The village will take more work after Christmas, of course. Will you be staying on here?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad to hear it. It'll be hard enough to replace the teachers who quit." She did not add anything about the ones who were killed, except to ask, "Have they found a new headmaster yet?"

At that, John left off his examination of the painting of her parents Joan kept over her desk. Instead he looked at her, studying her face.

"They've asked me."

"To be the headmaster? John, that is… Congratulations!"

"I declined."

"Oh." Joan folded her hands into her lap and dropped the smile from her face. "May I ask why?"

He squinted as he thought about it, which surprised her. When he told her he'd refused, he'd said it so bluntly, as if his inability to hold the position was a certainty. Looking back, she should have known better. There were no certainties with John.

"To begin with, I hardly have the experience. A little over two months teaching is hardly preparation to lead a school."

"If we look at it that way, you're not qualified to teach at all. Do you even have a degree?"

"Yes. Well, no. I have memories of getting one. I was at Oxford." He stood and began to pace. "But that didn't really happen, don't you see? It might _seem_ that I have the qualifications to be headmaster, but it's all lies."

"I hardly think they based the decision on your qualifications."

That stopped his pacing, at least.

"Even if you had spent each of your thirty-some years as John Smith," Joan explained patiently, "you still have half the experience of some of the teachers here."

Meditatively, he strolled to the window and looked out onto the dark grounds. Still he said nothing, so Joan continued.

"Yes, your past is a story. So is mine, and everyone else's. Just because you didn't live through yours doesn't make it any less a part of you. Are you going to let it determine your future too?"

He signed and turned back to her. The crease in his brow was deep as he considered. For her part, with nothing more to add that didn't stray into her own hopes, Joan busied herself with a loose thread on her sleeve. If he didn't think he could be a teacher, how would he balk at the idea of being a husband? She blushed for jumping to such a thought.

"Your hair is down," he said suddenly.

"What?"

He motioned to his own disheveled hair -- if she hadn’t already planned to give him a new journal for Christmas, she would have gifted him a comb -- and Joan remembered she had finished unpinning her own when he knocked. It hung past her shoulders, in waves from having been up all day.

"Yes, I was getting ready for bed."

"Oh, is it late?" He looked back out the window, and seemed surprised to find it dark though it had been for hours. "I beg your pardon, I hadn't realized the time. I'll just go."

"Don't go!" Joan leapt up as he strode for the door. "It's fine, truly. I was only going to bed for lack of anything better to do, but I'd much rather talk with you. Please, sit." She took her own seat again. John, after a moment's deliberation, did likewise.

"I must apologize through," he said. "Calling on you at odd hours to regale you with my problems. Less calling than barging in, more like." He muttered the last bit to himself.

"Nonsense." She smiled. "I've missed our talks, at any hour."

“Even now that things are...different?”

“Different?”

“Nurse Redfern, you must see that things have changed. I’m not...I don’t know who I am, or what happens now. Will I wake up one day and not be me anymore? Is this Doctor going to want his body back and I’ll just be…” He took a breath and let it out slowly.

Hearing her title and surname froze Joan in her seat. She expected, given his distance over the past weeks, that thoughts like those were going through his head, but hoped he would come to her with it, as he had in the early morning after the Family was stopped.

Time. She had promised herself to give him time. Now she saw he needed more. Grounding and reassurance and something real. Before her confidence could desert her in the face of it all, she went to sit beside him.

“So let’s start again,” she said, taking his hand. “Knowing what we know about you, and knowing what we know about me, let us try again. There might not be another dance for a while, but the rest of it.”

When he finally tore his gaze away from their clasped hands to look at her with wide eyes, she added, “And you might call me Joan.”

“I’d like that.” He gave her his shy grin. “Joan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all my readers so far!


	5. January 1914

They started with tea in the afternoons. Sometimes they talked, exchanging stories about students and the last of the repairs in the village. Sometimes John worked while she read now the term had begun and the stress of being headmaster set in. Once, on a stormy afternoon near the end of January, they sat side by side on her sofa, her head on his shoulder and his hand tracing up her arm and their mouths moving together, kissing and nipping. She had to duck into empty classrooms every time she thought of it over the next few days so the boys wouldn’t see her blush.

There was no talk of the past or the future or the Doctor. Joan mentioned Martha’s name in passing a few times, but it usually had the effect of ending the conversation. At first, she didn’t mind. She had John’s attention again and his boyish smiles when he was satisfied with himself. After everything, she reveled in a little bit of peace. 

By mid-January, they'd added dinners to their routine. Not the everyday dinners with the students in the hall, but proper dinners on Sundays. Once they even convinced the cook to give them run of the kitchen. John hadn't known if he could cook or not, and it turned out he definitely couldn't. Instead he snuck bits of food while Joan alternated cooking and swatting his thieving hands away.

It was at one of these dinners that Joan asked outright, "Have you spoken with Martha?"

His fork paused on the way to his mouth and the fact he couldn't meet her eye belied his measured, "About what?"

"About anything. Have you spoken to her at all?"

"Um no, not lately."

"You ought to."

"I'm not the man she wants to speak with."

"You haven't given her the chance. She might be waiting on some dream, but you're the closest thing she has. She's… _years_ from home and you're all she has."

"She'll have to settle for me."

"That isn't what I mean."

"I hardly remember her as a maid, let alone some friendship," John said. The crease was back between his brows. "I know nothing about whatever year she's from. I can't be the man she wants...I don't want to be."

"Talk to her. It might not have been your decision to bring her, but you, John Smith, might do her some good.”

The next time Joan passed Martha in the hallway, the young woman gave her a small smile before hurrying for the front door. Her eyes were no longer bloodshot. Joan didn’t ask about it other than to confirm with John that he’d talked to Martha. John didn’t share anything other than to say that, yes, they were speaking again.

Though she had encouraged John and Martha’s meeting, she sometimes felt flashes of jealousy in the hour after lunch when the school was quiet and she had nothing to do. In silence, the unpleasant thought crept in that she might have pushed him away from her. But then John would knock on her door for tea and greet her with a soft kiss. For as long as he was John, he was hers.

At night, as she lay in bed, that thought returned, another side to it in the dark. He was hers while he was John, but there was the possibility that, someday, somehow, he might no longer be John. Maybe she would wake one day to find herself looking at a stranger. Maybe he would tell her quietly one evening he was no longer content with a life in the countryside and was departing for the stars. He was a man on loan to her and she would never tell John that she already despaired the moment the Doctor wanted him back.

When they married, _if_ they married, it would be like losing a second husband if she had to give him up.

In the light of morning, she could push these thoughts away. There was simply no sense in worrying over things that might never happen.

\- - -

At the end of January, they had a proper date when John had to attend a dinner given by the school board and asked if she would like to go.

“With me,” he hurried to specify as an afterthought. “And when they begin to doubt my ability to be headmaster, could you tell them all those things you said before Christmas?”

She told him she hardly thought that would be necessary and she was right. She did speak up, however, with her hand in the crook of his elbow, when the board chair asked where John had grown up.

“In Nottingham,” John replied.

“Oh, I spent some years there when I was younger. Do you know of that one pub just off the high street? What was it called?”

“What a coincidence!” Joan exclaimed. “That must be the one you were telling me about the other day. You were talking about all the trouble you used to get in, sneaking in there after school.”

“Yes, that’s the one!” The board chair snapped his fingers. “But don’t let any of the boys hear those stories. You’ll never be able to teach them if they know you were once young too!”

John’s bewilderment showed plainly on his face, but he had the good sense to nod along and the board chair had drunk too much wine to notice anyway. As the man walked away to talk with someone else, John laid his hand over Joan’s for a moment.

They laughed and laughed as they wandered home that night, both having had a bit too much to drink themselves.

"How did you know which pub he was talking about?" John asked.

"I had no idea! I figured one pub is like any other pub and that's what my brothers used to do so I guessed."

"What if you'd been wrong? What if he was talking about a pub that mysteriously burst into flames one night, or was secretly an opium den? Or a brothel? And you told him I snuck in there as a lad?"

"Not everyone has your imagination, dearest. Besides, I was right, wasn't I?"

"Right? You were brilliant!" Without warning, he lifted her off the ground, spun around with her in his arms, and kissed her before setting her down.

"Oh," she giggled, trying to catch her breath, "you've knocked your hat off."

"So I have." It had a spot of mud on it which he clicked his tongue at, but merely placed it back on his head before linking her arm with his again.

When they reached the school, they were having much too wonderful a night to part. John offered brandy, Joan insisted they call for tea, and they found themselves laid out on John's sofa with all thoughts of drinks forgotten. Joan rested her head on his chest as he delicately pulled the pins out of her hair.

"Could I draw your portrait again?" he asked after a long, comfortable silence. "But with your hair down?"

"You should be careful. If you keep drawing me, I might become vain."

"You're beautiful." The last pin came out and a lock of hair fell over her eyes. John brushed it back. "Why shouldn't you be at least a little vain?"

"Goodness," she said and rubbed her cheek slightly against the fabric of his waistcoat. "A beautiful widow is one thing. I don't dare give society a vain widow. They'd die from the shock."

Joan laughed, but John simply hummed in response and went silent. She would have guessed he'd fallen asleep only his fingers kept running through her hair. The motion almost made her doze off until John whispered quietly, "It doesn't make sense to me."

"What's that?"

"I have...I know about society and propriety. That's all there, but it's like...I don't know why. I believe something, but I have no idea why I believe it. Does that make sense?"

She raised her head to look at him, only to find him staring at the far wall. "I suppose. What's brought this on?"

Her head went back to his chest and his hands back into her hair.

"You say widows shouldn't be beautiful, but I don't understand why. Then, tonight at dinner, when all you ladies had left, the board chair told me...He said that I needed to be careful. This needed to be an honest courtship since you were…" he hesitated and his hand went still in her hair before he rushed through, "a respectable widow. And not to let you tempt me into any affair and risk the reputation of the school. "

Joan had nothing to say. Ten years ago, she might have cried at the words, or made an angry retort. Now, hearing John repeat someone else, she only frowned.

"I don't see how you can be both respectable and a temptress," John said, attempting and failing to lighten the mood. He sighed and wrapped his arms around her waist when she didn't react. "It doesn't make sense. It doesn't… match with who _you_ are. Since I love you, what has propriety to do with it?"

_That_ was not the way Joan expected a man to declare his love. Well, other men. If she thought about it, she expected nothing less from John than to admit love without realizing he had done so.

"You have been spending too much time with Martha," Joan murmured.

"But you will tell me, won't you, if I do something to...I don't know, disgrace you? The knowledge is there, so I don't think it's likely, but sometimes I'm distracted or something slips out from...my past life."

Joan almost laughed at the thought of John disgracing her, and the thought that he worried about it. Tonight had been the first time he had the confidence to kiss her in a public place, and it was a deserted road after too much wine. He was serious though, waiting anxiously for her answer, so she said, "Of course I'll tell you."

"Good." She felt his grin when he kissed the top of her head. "Now tell me about your brothers."

"My brothers?"

"Yes, you said your brothers were troublemakers. Tell me about them, and your parents."

"Alright. My parents, their names are Samuel and Elizabeth. My father was a banker, though I think he always wished for a job where he could be outside. He practically lives in his gardens. My mother was also a nurse before she married my father-"

"It runs in the family then?"

"Well, we do make the best wives."

His arms tightened briefly around her. "And the best mothers."

That was how the maid found them the next morning when she came with tea. Joan sleeping nearly on top of John, still in her evening gown, and him fit awkwardly onto a too small sofa, his shirt wrinkled and necktie coming loose.

Joan wondered if they might disgrace themselves after all.


	6. April 1914

Joan could not say she had ever personally heard a woman swear with as much fluency as Martha did on the day she packed. It had been the swearing, or rather the volume of it, that drew Joan from her office to Martha's nearby room and found it in shambles and her trunk open.

"Martha, please," Joan chided from the doorway, "the students will hear you."

"Let them!" She tossed a dress into her trunk. "Maybe that will knock some sense into his head."

"What's happened?"

Martha froze, a book gripped in her hand, and studied Joan as if she only just realized she was there.

"Nothing." Her voice was soft and distant. "I'm leaving."

"Where are you going?"

"London, I suppose. Find a job. Nothing for me here, is there?"

" Is this about John?"

Martha shook her head in a way Joan took to mean it was completely about John. "Look," she said, "just keep him safe. I know what's coming, and he’ll run right to it. The Doctor is somewhere in there. You’ve got to keep him safe because we need him."

"What about you?"

"It doesn't matter what I think. I'm done waiting around for someone who hardly notices me." She went back to packing and Joan put her hands in her apron pockets as she tried to puzzle through this change. Joan knew Martha searched everywhere without finding the watch. Why she suddenly felt the need to run now was a mystery.

"What if he-" Joan cut herself off, biting her lip. It was a thought she'd been trying not to admit to herself, yet here she was asking it aloud. Martha paused to hear it. "What if he...changes back?"

For a long moment, they looked at each other. They were strangely united in that moment, though Joan couldn't say how. They were nothing alike, separated by nearly a century, and wanted two different things. But an silent understanding passed between them. Martha reached into the neck of her dress and pulled out a key, though not one like Joan had ever seen. It was thin and silver, hanging from the end of a string. Martha handed it to her.

"The key to the TARDIS. There’s an abandoned farm about three miles west of here. The TARDIS is there. You've got to keep this key safe too. I don't want to lose it while I'm travelling. Give him that if he wakes up. He'll be able to find me."

Joan wondered where she would hide the key once Martha left. She wondered if it would be somewhere she herself would be able to find it again. With a trembling hand, she reached out and took the key.

“Well, see you around,” said Martha as she turned back to her packing.

Understanding the dismissal, Joan left with the key clutched in her hand. She wandered back to her office and sat at her desk, the key shining on the wood. At first she didn’t recognize the feeling that seemed to spread from the back of her mind to take over her thoughts.

Relief. That’s what it was. She hadn’t felt threatened by Martha, or even particularly jealous, so that wasn’t where it stemmed from. It was as if Martha was a reminder of John’s history, to both him and Joan, a reminder of what might happen. Not a threat in herself, but she made it harder to ignore that there was a threat. Without her, Joan wondered if she could forget. Forget about the aliens and the Doctor and the panicked man who had sobbed to her that he did not want to die.

She wondered if she would forget there was a part of John’s life, something deep inside of him, that belonged to someone else and that she could not love.

Joan slipped the key into her desk drawer, settled beside odd pens and mostly empty ink bottles. It would wait for later. School was almost out and she needed to find out if John knew Martha was leaving, what he might have said to her to provoke it. She had been stubbornly set on staying and turning him back and now she was giving up. Joan didn’t know what could have prompted it.

Until she did. Halfway down the corridor to John’s door, she knew. That same spark of connection that prompted Martha to give her the key flared again. They both loved, essentially, the same man. They were both competing for the same man. For Martha to give up after so many months, she had to believe she had lost. Joan thought she could guess what John might have said to make Martha think so.

“Matron? Everything alright?”

A student was standing in front of her, and she realized she was standing in the middle of the hallway, wringing her hands.

“Should I get the headmaster?”

“No, Charlie, I’m fine,” she assured the boy. “My thoughts ran away with me for a moment. Thank you.”

Charlie nodded and walked off in the other direction as Joan finished her walk to John’s door. She didn’t knock, and debated going back to her own room instead.

Perhaps she had not _known_ for certain John would ask to marry her, but she suspected. She hoped he would without yet confronting the reality that he might. Not until this moment, that was, standing in front of his door, did she acknowledge the reality that she loved a man with no past and an uncertain future. Of course no future was certain, she had learned that in the harshest way possible with Oliver, but John’s seemed particularly nebulous, even with Martha gone.

Because sometimes he got lost in imagination that was actually memories and when the maid had woken them all those months ago, Joan lying half on John on his sofa, he had stared at her for a moment without recognition, without the fondness that made her heart swell each time she got caught in his glance. The look had disappeared quickly, and he beamed at her instead as he dismissed the embarrassed maid.

But for a single instant she had found the Doctor looking back at her.

Would they wake that way every morning for the rest of their lives, memories and dreams and stories warring in John’s mind? His love for her competing with all those fantastical adventures she could not imagine?

“Joan?”

Oh, he had opened the door. He was standing before her dressed in gown and mortarboard cap.

“Joan, what’s wrong?”

They would wake together though, John and her. That would count for something.

“Please, come sit down. You are quite pale.” He took her hand to pull her inside and she let herself be led through his office and into his rooms beyond. He gently pushed her to sit on the sofa she found her voice.

“Really, John, I’m fine. A bit distracted today, is all.”

He sat next to her, taking her hand and running his thumb over her knuckles. “What with?”

“Did you know Martha is leaving?”

Joan watched as every bit of color drained from his face, making his freckles stand out sharply. “Yes,” he said slowly, cautiously, “she said she would. Did she tell you why?”

“No.”

“She’s given up on me, it would seem.” He forced a laugh. “I am to remain John Smith.”

“For now.” Joan bit her lip after the words escaped and glanced at him through her eyelashes.

His brow was drawn in contemplation, the corners of his mouth turned down. “What reason would I have to be anyone else? All I want is here.” He drew her hand to his mouth before turning it to kiss her palm.

“I have to go.” Joan pulled her hand back and stood. Before he could say anything else, she was through his door, hurrying back down the corridor and out onto the grounds. She didn’t permit herself time to think as she went. This was not something she could reason through. It was only a question of loving another man enough to risk losing him when she already knew what loss felt like. It was a question of whether she loved John Smith enough for that.

She was passing through the school gates when she decided that, yes, she did. More than that, if she was honest.

Even if she lost him tomorrow, she would thank that stupid alien for allowing her to have today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this house we stan Martha Jones. I like anyone who has the courage to realize they're not getting what they need from a relationship and search elsewhere. That being said, she's not a major character in most of this story, mostly because I think she would put up with John Smith even less than the Doctor and she's got better things to do right now.


	7. April 1914

It took John two weeks to work up the courage to actually propose.

Joan partially blamed herself for that. She suspected he had been about to ask her the day Martha left, only to have her run out of the room on him. She apologized at length afterwards, saying she hadn’t felt well, she had been upset at the way Martha departed the school. John smiled and nodded, but he was closed off from her. He began missing their tea time.

The third time it happened, she walked right into his headmaster’s office.

He stopped halfway through admonishing the student sitting across the desk from him, gaping at Joan for a moment before he remembered himself and closed his mouth with a click of his teeth.

“Matron,” he said, voice quavering, “I am a bit busy at the moment. Could it wait?”

“No, I’m afraid it can’t.”

It took a moment for him to collect himself. He had to clear his throat twice before saying, “Thank you, Matthews. Go back to class. We’ll finish this discussion later.”

Matthews, spared the extent of whatever punishment she had interrupted, fled the office without a word. Joan took his vacated seat.

“I was unsure,” she said without preamble, her tone businesslike. This was an apology, not a place to put all her emotions on display.

“Unsure? About...me?”

“About this Doctor.”

“He’s not me, Joan-”

“Please let me finish.”

John subsided into silence.

“I know he is not you,” she said. “But there are moments when I see him in you. I think you notice them too, sometimes. I didn’t know if, one day, you might realize you did not want to be John anymore. Maybe I won’t be enough for you.” She felt tears in the corner of her eyes and blinked to clear them. No emotions, she had sworn to herself. “I don’t want to lose another husband.” The first tear fell and Joan covered her face with her hands.

There was no reply.

His hand was was on arm, the other pulling her hands away from her face and she found him on his knees before her. “Joan, this is real. Everything I’ve done with you, everything I’ve said, it was real. It is real. I don’t know about this…this alien I’m supposed to be, I only know about me, John Smith. And I know I love you. Why can’t that be enough?”

“No, John, that’s what I’m saying.” She she gripped his hand to her heart. He raised his eyes to her smile. “I’m saying that it’s enough. More than enough.”

It took him a moment to comprehend her words. She watched it on his face, how his eyes went narrow, and then wide, and then so wide that his eyebrows arched into his hairline. His grin followed with a tilt of his head.

“Husband?” he said.

“What?”

“You said, ‘another husband.’ You didn’t want to lose ‘another husband.’”

“Why...you...insolent man!” She laughed and stood. “I will see you for tea tomorrow?”

His smile hadn’t faded, though it had gone a bit shy, and he nodded. “Yes, tomorrow. I’ll have…” he swallowed, “a better idea of what I want to say.”

\- - -

When John knocked the next afternoon, she opened the door to find him standing there with a tray laden with the tea pot, cups, roses, and a box.

She stood back to let him pass so he could set the tray on the desk. His hand barely shook as he poured the tea and his face was stoic when he offered her a cup. It was a bit oversteeped. She guessed he had hesitated outside her door for a while. Joan lowered herself onto the sofa with her tea and John went to take the chair opposite her. As soon as he was sat, he leapt up again, sloshing tea out of his cup.

“I brought flowers,” he blurted.

“Yes, I saw.”

He retrieved the roses and handed them to her. Their scent was thick, their petals still glinting with dew drops, as if he recently cut them from a nearby farm.

“They’re lovely, John. Thank you.”

With a startled smile, he took his seat again and sipped his tea.

“Should we go for a walk?” John asked, rising again.

With a quiet sigh, Joan returned her tea cup to her saucer and said, “If you like.”

Joan draped a shawl over her shoulders though it looked as if she might not need even that given the sunlight and brilliant green trees she could see from the window. At the door, John bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for her and when she approached, he seized her hand to pull her out into the hallway. They didn’t speak as they raced outside, but John did slow on the front lawn, folding her hand into the crook of his elbow as he led them toward the distant trees.

Normally Joan would humor him with some small talk while he collected his thoughts, but today she found herself impatient for him to begin. Pointedly she looked at birds taking flight in the distant sky, the leaves swaying in the breeze, a group of boys kicking a ball about on the lawn. She wondered if someone would engineer a small disaster that John could save them from, thinking that would spark John’s confidence.

“Joan,” he began suddenly. He stopped in his tracks as he said it and nearly pulled her off her feet. When he’d righted her again, he continued, “Joan, you have read my journal. You know what adventures my dreams show me. There is some other, thrilling story out there that, though I still hardly believe it, is connected to me." He paused and she watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "Nothing in those dreams has ever compared to the joy of taking tea with you every afternoon or...waking up with you in the morning those months ago." At the last, he bowed his head shyly, and she heard what went unsaid, the yearning for more than waking up beside her in bed. "You know I have no past, not one that counts anyway, and I am in many ways woefully inexperienced and uncertain. I'm not terribly bold or brave-"

"John."

"But I would buy us a house, I've found one not far from the school. My income would support us, though you could keep working if you liked, at least until there are children, and we could still take tea together everyday, and supper and breakfast. That's all I want. All I've ever wanted really." He stopped, more because he was out of breath than words, and began to search through his pockets. "Oh!" he cried suddenly, "I've forgotten the ring. It's still inside, on the tray. I'll only just-"

"John."

He froze his fruitless searching to gape at her.

"I think you haven't asked the question yet."

At last the calmness and surety set in. Taking both her hands in his, he asked evenly, "Please, Joan Redfern, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

"Yes, of course I will."

She led their kiss, nearly launching herself at him, her palms against his cheeks to pull him to her. It took him a moment to respond to her fierceness before he lifted her off the ground. Responding in kind, she ran the tip of her tongue over his bottom lip, grinning when he gasped. They stayed like that far longer than was decorous and Joan did not care. His words had been so perfect and so utterly _him_ , jumbled and distracted and unsure, all for her and her happiness.

One of the boys playing on the lawn wolf whistled at them.

John set her on her feet again. She linked her hands around his neck in case he tried to pull away, but he didn’t. He stayed with his hands about her waist and an embarrassed quirk of his lips and said, “That was one of those propriety things, wasn’t it?” He touched his forehead to hers with a defeated sigh lessened by his smile.

“I can overlook that one,” Joan said. She felt giddy.

“Thank you for being patient with me.” His second sigh was real. “I am afraid I shall require a great deal more of your patience. Marriage and...everything is...I haven’t done any of it before.”

“You’re lucky then that one of us is an expert in such things.” The words might have made her blush before John. Or, more likely, she never would have dared say them at all. She felt unendingly safe in that moment though, with his arms around her and his head bent over hers. All the terrible things that happened last winter, all the terrible things that might yet happen, seemed of no consequence at all. John was chuckling at her words, his chest and shoulders shaking under her hands with the laughter. She took a deep breath. The smell of the new grass and the cedar from their clothes and him, like wood polish and books, dust and soap. Any of those, all of those, would always make her think of this moment, she thought.

John bent so he could kiss her again.


	8. May 1914

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is nsfw ;)

Joan would never have considered herself a wordly person. The county she grew up in was nearly the same as this one, and she could count on one hand the number of times she had been to London. Her role as a nurse came from the necessity to support herself rather than any true desire for feminine independence. Her previous marriage was to a childhood friend, equally as unsophisticated as herself. The most shameful thing they had done during lovemaking was to do it in the afternoon, and they both giggled their way through it.

Certainly, she was no virgin bride and times were changing, but she never expected to have to guide her husband. Hinting about the village dance for their first date seemed shockingly forward at the time. Now her new husband stood, fully dressed, just past their bedroom doorway, nearly quaking, and she understood she would need to direct their wedding night. It was a heady prospect.

Comfort. That was the first thing she thought of. Laughter too. One followed the other on her first wedding night, tipsy as they were off the wine from their party.

Well, she had wine. Leaving John standing at the threshold, she went to the dresser and poured two glasses. By the time she’d returned, he had moved to the middle of the room. She handed him his glass and sank onto the bed.

Perhaps it would have been easier if they were back at the school, in his study. Starting their life together in a home of their own seemed like a good idea at the time, but Joan yearned for the familiarity of the study’s dark walls and worn sofa. Her home’s white washed walls and unslept in bed made her feel like a trespasser.

“Would you like to sit?” she asked, motioning to the space next to her.

Though he looked as if it was the last thing he wanted to do, he did sit, a bit aways from her. She took his hand and wondered which of them would work up their courage first. Given the way he nearly spilt his wine when her hand slipped into his, Joan suspected it would be her.

Her place to instruct, to set the pace of their evening. John had been gentle and cautious in their kissing, and never more than that, until now. At first she had thought it his personality, timid and kind. Now she wondered if he did not know what could come next.

It did not seem to matter that John worked with young men all day. All the boys’ conversations and the contraband drawings and magazines surreptitiously passed between them, everything Joan could no longer be shocked by, seemed to never reach John’s notice. Like his memory of his childhood home, it seemed the Doctor had given him a textbook definition of sex, but not bothered to provide any emotions or memories to go with it.

Maybe, like love, the Doctor had not thought of it. Maybe whatever type of alien the Doctor was did not yearn for that intimacy. Did John? It was always so difficult to tell where one stopped and the other began. To know he wanted to proceed though, the man she had married, the man before her, would do a great deal in making them both more comfortable.

Joan took a too large gulp of wine and felt her eyes water with the effort not to cough as she set her glass aside. She was still struggling when John blurted, “I don’t know if I know how to do this.”

She tightened her grip on his hand, but he pulled away and stood. First he strode to put his wine glass on the nightstand before he came back before her. His eyes were stormy and face impassive.

"He didn't give me any memories of it. It's like dancing, I don't know if I know how. I know how it-" He gave a half wave of his hand. "I'm just not sure…I don't want to-" The anger was fading as his brow creased in consternation and his hand moved to his pocket. Joan caught it before it could disappear and pulled him down beside her on the bed as he finished lamely, "To disappoint you."

"You won't disappoint me. This-" she gestured between them "-has no effect on what I feel for you. It is your kindness, your bravery, and your intelligence that pleases me. And your handsomeness," she added with a smile. In return, he did not frown. She brought his hand up so she could kiss his knuckles. "Besides, this is not his. This is yours. Ours. Why would we want his memories here?"

There was a moment of silence before his grip tightened on hers, almost to the point of pain but she didn’t pull away.

“Only if you want to though,” Joan said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ah, yes.” John cleared his throat, glancing at her lips for an instant. “Yes, certainly. Yes.”

Joan grinned. Her dear, sweet husband . She shifted so she could face him and set to work on his tie, then his waistcoat buttons and shirt buttons and braces and the tails tucked into his trousers.

“I think you’ll find,” she said as she pushed his shirt and coat from his shoulders, “that this will be a bit more instinctive than dancing.”

Almost unconsciously, he helped her free his hands from his shirt cuffs and tossed his jacket to the floor. She would hang it up for him tomorrow. Maybe. If she got out of bed.

Before she had half a second to look at him, he said, “You now,” and motioned for her to turn around. She complied and he fiddled with the buttons of her dress. They were tiny, finicky buttons, not as many as her first wedding dress, but it had taken her maid of honor ten minutes to do them up. John traced them down her back, patiently and in silence. Only his breath, slightly rougher than usual, and the chirping crickets beneath the open window broke the stillness.

She was beginning to wish they had gotten undressed on their own, meeting only once they were in nightshirts. At the time, she had eschewed the idea. This would give them time to think, to talk. Too much time, though.

“Sorry for all the buttons,” Joan murmured. It sounded loud in their little room.

Instead of replying, John leaned in and placed a kiss at the nape of her neck. Joan shivered. After each button came undone, she received another kiss. Eventually the kisses moved to the side of her throat, and along her newly bared shoulder. They were soft but they seared through her until the nerves were replaced by anticipation.

“I don’t mind the buttons,” John whispered against her skin, “but I will have some qualms with your corset.”

Joan laughed.

The last button came undone and Joan turned back to him. He had crossed a leg on the bed so he could sit facing her and had his hands folded in his lap as she observed him. She started with his waistband, finding that somehow easier than meeting his eyes. Goodness, he was skinny. Did he forget to eat, distracted as he was? She reached out to brush her fingers over his stomach, the muscles there twitching before she drew her hand up, over his sternum and through the sparse hair on his chest. He had no scars or marks of any kind.

Her fingers crossed his Adam’s apple, his chin, and stopped finally on his lips. Joan raised her gaze to his.

For once, he was perfectly still. The last of his mirth about corsets and buttons glinted in the corners of his eyes, but his focus was on her. Joan felt her breath leave her. She was always in his thoughts, she knew, yet so rarely did his distractible mind settle on just her, just for a moment.

He came to her for a kiss, his hands in her hair without a thought to the pins that slipped out. When she touched her the tip of her tongue to his lips, he parted for her, allowing her in with a shutter and a choked sound. As he kissed back, his hands moved to her back and her waist, pulling her closer. Joan tried to lift herself into John’s lap without letting their mouths part.

“Oh!” she gasped as her foot caught on her hem and she went tumbling off the side of the bed. John caught her, holding her while she giggled in his arms. His chest shook behind her with his own laughter. “Let me get out of these clothes,” she said when the laughter abated.

As she slipped out of dress and petticoats and corset and hair pins, Joan wished again that she had undressed before she and John were together, though for a different reason this time. Corsets were tricky to unhook in a rush.

“Well?” she prompted when she was down to her chemise. “Take off your trousers.”

John complied without hesitation and, by the time he’d straightened, Joan had gotten the rest of her clothes off and was setting her folded chemise on the dresser. It was bold to stand there naked, bolder than Joan would have ever been with her first husband, but her consideration of society’s expectations for her became less important everyday. John said those expectations were mere stories to him, but Joan was doubting it given the way he gaped at her, apparently unsure where to look. Or maybe it was only his doubts paralyzing him again. His hand fluttered out from his side only to fall back against his thigh as his gaze became pleading.

Furiously tamping down any self-consciousness that twinged through her lust, Joan walked until she was directly before him, her gaze level with his collar bone. Good, a safe place to look. She breathed deep to will her nerves away. She could lead this, she wanted this. Wanted him. Without a word, she pushed his drawers to the floor and guided him to step out of them and lay on the bed. He still had hold of his trousers, and might have forgotten to let them go at all if she hadn’t yanked them from his hand and tossed them to the floor with the rest of his things. She would not, she decided as she climbed beside him, be getting out of bed tomorrow to do anything about his rumpled clothes.

Joan skimmed her hands over every part of him she could reach, save for his erection where it lay thick and hot against his stomach. The idea of reaching for him in that way was more than she could summon the courage for at the moment. Instead she contented herself with learning the ridges of his hips and the muscles in his thighs, wanting to know him, to stretch out this moment, to memorize every hitch of his breath. Every time she glanced up to make certain he was enjoying himself, enjoying _her_ , his eyes, though they were half lidded, were fixed on her. It was as if he had never seen her before, and yet had no need to look at anything else again.

Until her hand moved too close to his cock and his hips jerked upwards. By the way his eyes flew wide, he had not intended the movement and his breath shuttered out as she drew her hand away. They both went still.

“Joan?” he asked. It was quiet but his voice broke on her name. His expression was still shocked, almost fearful.

At once she abandoned her perusal of his skin and leaned over to kiss him. The feeling that ached in her breast as he reached to cup her cheek so tenderly might have been mistook for a breaking heart if she hadn’t been so incandescently happy. The only other time she had felt an emotion so strongly was when she held the war office telegram all those years ago and felt her heart shatter. The strength of her love now, the fear of all that she might lose again, indeed almost had, was as painful in its intensity as that long gone day.

Kissing him was no longer enough. His hands on her cheek and holding her hip were everything, but they were not enough. She pulled away from him, cherishing his little unconscious cry that followed her, and situated herself on his thighs, facing him. She could not feel shameful about it with his eyes roaming her body the way her hands had roamed his.

"I-I...You are…"

He would have said _beautiful_ , she knew, if she had given him the chance. Instead she gripped his erection and tugged gently and his words were cut off in a strangled groan. His eyes scrunched closed before flying open again so he could look at her again.

"Is that alright?" she asked.

Without a sound, John licked his kiss-swollen lips and nodded.

So Joan continued, swirling precome over the head of him and moving her hand up and down. He was ready for her, more than if the depth of the crease between his brows was anything to go by. She nearly was too, her body warm from the kissing and the undressing and watching the expressions flit over John's face. She reached for his hand where it laid useless on the bed, and placed instead on her breast.

"Here," she said. “Like this.”

He held the weight of her breast in his hand, massaging it, and brought his other hand up to mirror the first. Joan heard her own soft gasp escape and a wave of heat rush downward as he lightly pinched one of her nipples until it became a firm peak beneath his hand. He started on the other one.

There would be more, there was a lifetime for more, but at this moment Joan wanted him inside of her. Her heart and her body ached for him.

She stilled her hand, holding the base of his cock as she lifted herself and sank down upon him. She went slowly, as much for his benefit as hers. John’s hands slipped from her breasts to hover over her hips as if he wasn’t sure whether to pull her down or push her off of him. All the while, his eyes were on the place where their bodies joined as he panted through parted lips.

“Oh,” Joan gasped when she was settled in his lap. “ _Oh_.”

It was at that moment that instinct seemed to overtake him. John seized her hips, his grip strong but his movements gentle as he lifted her. Almost instantly he pulled her back down, thrusting up to meet her. Too much, too quick. With a gasp, Joan planted a palm on his chest and he paused, patient and not so unsure this time.

“My dear?”

She nodded.

Their pace was steady, but not fast and Joan bent forward to kiss him. He responded at once, hungrily swallowing the keening cries that escaped her until their movements became too erratic and Joan lifted her head to watch him. Until he was mumbling incoherent words of which Joan could catch only her name and _love_ and _real_. Until with eyes screwed shut and half a shout, he tugged her down hard and spilt himself inside her.

She watched his features shift and go slack as her own breathing slowed and she could pillow her head on his shoulder. While she stroked her thumb along his cheek, his arms wound about her waist to hold her as his softening cock slipped from her.

"Well, Mr. John Smith,” she said, her light tone still tinged with breathlessness, “you are truly married. There will be no getting out of it now."

He stretched his neck to look at her and grinned that, admittedly sleepy, schoolboy grin he had when he was delighted with himself or her. She wasn’t sure which of them it was at this moment.

“Good. I have no wish to be out of it, Mrs. Smith.”

Joan giggled as she pushed herself back to seated before suddenly sobering. With the sweat cooling on her skin and John watching her intently where she sat, completely naked, astride him, she felt a blush steal across her skin. She bowed her head.

“What must you think of me?” She huffed a humorless laugh. “So bold. It’s quite…”

He shifted beneath her until they were side by side, propped on their pillows and John could pull the quilt up to their chests. Settled, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

“All I am thinking is how impossible it seemed yesterday that I could ever love you more than I did then. Today I’m reconciling myself to the impossibility that I will love you and your boldness still more tomorrow. It’s quite lucky, really, that I believe in impossible things.”

Joan chuckled again and swatted his arm. “Insufferable man,” but the words were affectionate. “Besides, if I were not so bold, we would still be colleagues and nothing more!”

“Yet another reason I love your boldness.” He went quiet a moment, stroking his hand along her upper arm as he thought. “You will,” he said finally, “show me how to please you next, won’t you?”

“Oh, John, you do please me.”

“Yes, but…” He gestured between them.

“But what?” She smiled to herself.

“But you didn’t...didn’t...You know…”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t orgasm,” John finally forced out, sounding adorably flustered. “Well, it's only that I work in a boys' school and I'm not completely oblivious. There are books-”

“Goodness, what books?”

“Nothing suitable for you."

"Dearest, you forget that I am the nurse for those same boys you teach." She laughed another moment at his expense and turned towards him to find his shoulders covered in a pale pink blush. "I wouldn't have been so forward if I'd known you'd been studying. But here, give me your hand. I will show you how to please me."

"Now?"

"Certainly. Boldness, remember?"

"Yes, I remember. And impossible things."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Undressing people in 1914 is a _chore_. I knew about women's fashion, but I had to do some research for the men's. So. many. layers. I was exhausted just writing about the undressing. Every time I thought I finally had them naked, I remembered things like sleeve garters and had to go start all over again.
> 
> Also, I have a drinking game where I take a shot every time the author uses the title of the story somewhere in the text. If you also play that drinking game, you're welcome.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and your comments and kudos so far!


	9. September 1914

When Joan arrived at John’s study, bearing the tea things she had persuaded the cook to give to her instead of a maid, the open door spared her the trouble of knocking. She paused in the doorway.

John half sat, half leaned on the edge of his desk as he listened to Timothy Latimer. He was spinning his mortarboard cap by its points, the tassel swinging wildly, as Tim fiddled with a book on the shelf, though neither seemed to pay any attention to their fidgeting. There was some surprise in seeing Tim here. She had not known he was on speaking terms with John after his hand in the events last year.

“...not the only one. Quite a few of us are meeting up to go to the war office tomorrow and enlist. Most of our class actually.” He slid the book back onto the shelf and looked up. “Matron Smith.”

“Hello, Mr. Latimer.”

Realizing his wife had arrived, John dropped his cap and jumped to take the tea tray from her with a kiss on her cheek. It took him a moment to find space on his desk for it as he’d covered the surface with what looked like half read newspapers. He took them from the house when he left each morning, walking out with them like he didn’t realize he was no longer sitting at the breakfast table. Apparently they all ended up on his desk.

“I can go, sir,” Latimer said. “I don’t want to interrupt your appointment.”

“Of course not,” Joan said. “I think I am the one interrupting you two. I can come back later.”

“We’re nearly done.”

With a smile, Latimer pulled out a chair for her and she sat, trying not to look too interested in their conversation.

“Can’t you wait?” John asked. “Some of your classmates aren’t even eighteen. And you, at least finish school. If there is a war to be fought, surely you can fight it after you’ve finished school.”

“They’re saying it will be over by Christmas.”

“Then the army won’t need seventeen year old boys who are not yet out of school.”

“You’re enlisting?” Joan exclaimed, turning in her seat to better see the both of them.

“Yes, and he’s taking most of my sixth form students with him.”

Joan rose as though she might personally stop the sixth form from heading off to fight, though she gripped the back of her chair for support.

“I’m not taking anyone,” Latimer said fiercely. “This school prepared us to fight and now the students are ready. I have seen the future. I know this happens.”

“Do you know that everyone lives?” John had his hands in fists and his eyes were cold as he glared at the young man. “Do you know if all of these boys are going to come home to their mothers at the end of it? This school did not prepare you to kill another person. It did not. Nothing could.”

Latimer glared right back. His headmaster did not frighten him. Joan stood to the side, looking between the two of them, wishing for once that John was more formidable than he truly was. His anger and stubbornness could not stand next to Tim’s.

“Mr. Latimer,” Joan said quietly, “think of what you’re saying. You are just boys.”

“I’m sorry, Matron,” he said without looking at her. “It’s not just me. The others have decided and they want to fight. I can help save some.”

John said nothing more and, after a drawn silence, Latimer turned and left. He shut the door with soft _click_ behind him.

While John stayed staring at his closed door, Joan got up to pour the tea, adding the milk and sugars, and setting his saucer on a newspaper that bore a grainy picture of an aeroplane and proclaimed ten thousand Austrians had been killed.

“How many will we watch die?” John asked. He was still staring at the door. “She said this would happen.”

Joan bristled. How was it that mentions of Martha always seemed to accompany misfortunes? Thinking it safer to say nothing, she sipped delicately at her tea and waited.

“I feel so powerless.”

As her eyes flew to him, her teacup hit the saucer so roughly that tea sloshed over the side. “John.” A second later, she was at his side, her arms around him. He did not respond at first and Joan tried to muffle the breaking of her heart as she held her stiff, slumped husband. “John, you are not powerless. Think of all you have done.” She felt a tear and brushed her cheek against his waistcoat to remove it. This was supposed to have been a happy day. She had expected tears of joy and she expected them to be John’s, not hers. “Think of all you do for me, for our family. You are not powerless.”

Finally his arms came around her shoulders and he placed a kiss on the top of her head. He still stood without speaking, but Joan felt her breath release. Whatever the newspapers on his desk said and whichever of the boys who could not be stopped from enlisting, they would be alright. John and her.

“You brought cakes.” His chin was resting against her hair so she felt his teeth click as he spoke.

“What?”

“With the tea. I know it’s been a few months since we’ve had tea together, but I would have remembered cakes.”

Joan’s breathy laugh had no humor. “It hardly seems like the time now.”

“Time for what?”

“Nothing, John. Let’s just have tea.”

Whatever was in her expression told him not to push any further. They mopped up the bit of tea she had spilt with some spare newspaper and took their seats. It was still quiet between them as they sipped. John stared unseeing at his desk and Joan studied the ripples in her tea.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t be so distracted if you didn’t keep so many newspapers,” said Joan.

“Sorry?”

“I can’t believe that fixating on this-” she gestured to his desk “-is doing you any good. Perhaps if you threw some out?”

He watched her with furrowed brow until he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, the papers! Yes, I do seem to have several of them. I suppose it never occurred to me to throw them out.”

“That does seem to happen with you.”

“Seems unwise to throw away things at random,” he muttered even as he stood and began collecting the papers. “Never know what might be...Nevermind.” He dropped the first armful of newsprint into a crate he also hadn’t yet thought to throw away.

Joan let her thoughts wander as he carried over the second armful. She read those papers before John carried them off. All those young men in all those countries. But she couldn’t think about that today.

“Our family?”

She turned in her chair to find John frozen in the middle of the room, his arms full of newspaper as he stared open mouthed at her. “What?”

“You said, ‘our family.’ That I did things for you, but also for our family.”

Joan’s breath was a laugh that turned to a sob on the inhale. She put her teacup down before she could drop it and buried her face in her hands. It never mattered how distracted he was, did it? He was still listening, still with her.

A furious rushing sound made her look up to find John had released his grip and let weeks of newsheets slide down his legs to the floor. The landed, still rustling, as he strode for her, kneeling beside her chair.

“Joan?” he whispered.

“I had a very nice afternoon planned out,” she said, her voice cracking. “There were cakes.”

“Yes, I saw.” He took both her hands in both of his. He was waiting for some denial, she realized, but she had none to give. As that fact dawned on him, the smile spread across his face, surprised at first before turning wider than she had ever seen. The tears she had expected glinted in his eyes. “How…What...” He swallowed, unsure what to ask first. “Should you stop working?”

It did not surprise her that was his first question. She pulled her hand free so she could pat his cheek. “Not for a few months, dearest.”

“But if-”

“If I notice anything that isn’t as it should be, I will quit immediately. I will stay in bed and you will have to wait on me hand and foot.”

“How many months?”

“Until I stop working?”

“No, until…” He gestured at her stomach as if he didn’t have the words for this news. Or was simply too overwhelmed to use them.

“A little over seven months, I think.”

He smiled again, wider than last time, and ran his hand over his mouth.

“You’re pleased then?” Joan asked. “I know we never talked about it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if there would be children. Oliver and I, we were never blessed in that way before he went to war...So you’re pleased?”

As he rose to kiss her, he shook his head in fondness at her anxious questions. When his smiling lips met hers, she realized she too was grinning far too broadly for their kiss to have any finesse. Their teeth clacked together, though it didn’t bother either of them, and John’s tears of happiness mixed with her own.


	10. April 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short and sweet. Enjoy, and thanks for your lovely comments and kudos.

The baby girl the midwife passed to Joan was the most precious thing Joan had ever seen. The midwife had cleaned and swaddled her while Joan rested, and now her pink face, scrunched up with tears, and single wisp of fluffy white hair were shown to best advantage. Joan delicately touched her finger to the closed eyes and tiny ears.

“Can you get John?” she asked, hardly bothering to glance at the midwife.

The door clicked open before the woman could move. “I’m here, my love.” For someone who had been waiting outside the door for at least a few minutes, he was surprisingly out of breath. Standing at the threshold didn’t seem to help him catch it and his mussed clothes didn’t help the impression. Or perhaps did, Joan thought with a rush of affection. In his waistcoat and shirtsleeves and his hair sticking up where he had run his hands through it, he appeared flustered. When he finally walked towards her, he moved as if his next step might not hold him.

“Are you well?” he asked from beside the bed.

Instead of an answer, Joan smiled. Her exhaustion couldn’t temper it. His own expression was unsure as she lifted the baby girl to him, the familiar crease between his brows as he took her. His instinct kicked in with his daughter in his arms and, with it, his grin. His lips curled up, his eyes sparkled with joys and tears and wonder as her sobs tapered off into sniffles. John turned slightly on the spot, moving with nervous energy, the late afternoon light making his shirt and her hair glow. Suddenly he laughed. Just a small chuckle, almost of disbelief. Joan sat up to see one of their daughter’s little hands had come free of its blankets and she was waving it about. John claimed it with one of his fingers.

As if his knees would no longer support him, he sank onto the bed beside her, their daughter clutched to his chest. Joan found it hard to breathe.

“She’s so beautiful,” John whispered. He tore his eyes from the baby to find Joan’s and wordlessly asked for her hand in his. “What shall we name her?”

“After one of our mothers maybe?”

John’s face darkened in the sunlight before he looked back down. The pain of the words were forgotten before Joan could curse the weariness that made her thoughts slow.

“Margaret, then?” John asked. “It fits her.”

“Only because you haven’t heard her cry for hours yet.”

“It will fit then too, don’t you think?”

Joan swatted his arm. “You had better hope she doesn’t have your lip or you’ll be pulling her out of all kinds of trouble.”

“Never.” John leaned forward to kiss Joan’s forehead. Between that movement and Joan swatting at his arm, baby Margaret stirred, whimpering as she turned her head restlessly in the crook of her father’s elbow. “She’ll have your brains and common sense to keep her out of trouble. Of course, you did marry me, so perhaps I’m wrong.”

“Extraordinary man,” Joan said with a fond shake of her head.

“Extraordinary wife,” John replied as he handed Margaret back to her and placed a kiss on both their brows.


	11. August 1915

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I completely forgot to post on Tuesday. In fact, I forgot it was Tuesday at all. I started two new jobs in the same week and I have no idea what day it is.
> 
> This chapter is nsfw.

John naturally fell into the role of putting Margaret to bed in the evenings. At first they did it together, passing Margaret between them when she would not stop crying and watching over her in comfortable silence when she was restful. But one evening, after Joan had been up to feed her five times the previous night, John insisted she lie down instead and she had not argued.

Now, at seven sharp, John would collect Margaret off her blankets and carry her to bed, grinning and babbling at her all the way. It made sense really. Joan spent all day with Margaret while John had only the evenings. Sometimes Joan used the hour in her evenings to read or nap or write her mother. On others, she helped their maid Lucy finish the day’s chores. They brought the young woman on as a maid two months ago when Joan found herself overwhelmed with the baby and though she was bright and quick witted for fifteen years old, there was far too much work for one person.

On this night, Joan was filling out her registration form, a white form to ask who she was and where she lived so the government might know who resided in the country. John had one too, a pink one. He had put his name to it but no other information. She wondered if something distracted him from it, or if he was frightened of what this form meant. What this new law meant in the context of a war where the government kept saying they did not have enough soldiers. Where homes were putting up flags and women shouted coward at men in the streets and colorful flyers papered lampposts and mothers were receiving telegrams from the war office.

Joan was frightened.

It had gone on a year now. It had not been finished by Christmas.

If she considered everything reasonably, John was not a prime candidate for a soldier. He was married, nearly forty, and a teacher with a family to support. Whenever the papers talked about such things, words like _conscription_ and _called-up_ , the things those men in the government kept proposing, men like John were excluded.

She was finding it hard to be reasonable.

On the bottom of her form, she signed her name and stood.

Another war. She would not lose another husband to it. It did not matter what ideals they were supporting. National pride was nothing to her. The London suffragettes, so ready to shout coward and selfishness, did not have husbands and baby daughters. Joan wanted love and happiness, for her, for John, and for Margaret. That was all she would fight for, and it would not be fought with machine guns.

John had asked, desperately, if he hadn’t earned the right to live and be John Smith and love her. She had said yes.

There was a pile of folded laundry on the kitchen work table, mostly Margaret’s nightgowns and nappies. Joan collected it with a sigh and wandered upstairs to her bedroom. There was a gap where the door was open, letting Joan see a slice of floor and the window where John sat in the last bits of fall light. She could hear his voice , murmuring to Margaret.

“...then it began to rain again. Raining on the moon, can you imagine that? And the hospital fell back to Earth, right back to where it had all started. Now, that's enough stories. It's time for you to go to sleep or you'll be a right grouch for your mother tomorrow."

He and Margaret moved out of her view for an instant, but Joan stayed still. It felt like she was somehow intruding by listening to these stories. She suspected he still had dreams when he woke with a gasp in the morning or shouted out in the night. He didn't write them down anymore though. She still kept his old journal in her trunk. Now that Joan could no longer be charmed by the fantastical stories, now that she knew where they came from, he apparently shared them with their daughter instead. It made her feel strangely empty. She did not want the stories. She didn’t think she could bear to hear them, knowing they were true, that John lived that life before. But it was part of their first connection they had lost. There were other things, stronger ones, binding them together, but she thought she might always mourn that one.

“Joan?”

She flinched. He was back at the window, sitting on the seat with his long legs folded in front of him. Lost in her thoughts, she had missed his return. Now he was watching her through the gap in the door.

“Is everything alright?”

She wandered in, setting her washing on the dresser. Without it to hold, she wrapped her arms around herself and nodded.

“Come here.” He readjusted himself on in the window, putting his legs out straight so she could climb into his lap. It was still awkward in so small a space, her legs dangling over the side and his arms at an angle so his elbow didn’t strike the window as they came around her. In this position, he was looking at her profile rather than the first stars outside. She lay her head on his shoulder. After a moment, he offered, “She’s falling asleep more quickly now.”

Joan nodded.

“Did Lucy finish with the dishes?”

“You didn’t finish your registration form.”

“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment. “Yes. I supposed I’m not quite sure who I am. Didn’t know what to put.”

“Put thirty-nine, husband, father, teacher. Show them you’re needed here and they won’t send you.”

He didn’t reply. Instead he shifted so he could look at the sky as he swept his thumb along her bare arm. They sat in the silence for a long time, broken only by Margaret’s soft noises of sleep.

Finally, Joan said, “Do you still dream of it?”

“Yes. Less now than I used to.” He laughed at that. “Less even before we weren’t getting any sleep.”

“Do you…” She trailed off, suddenly not sure she wanted his answer. His gentle nudge prompted her along. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like?”

Behind her, he shifted and she guessed he was trying to look at her despite their awkward position. “Do I regret it, you mean?” His tone had gone sharp, almost angry.

“No. Just do you ever wonder what it would be like? When you tell Margaret, do you picture _yourself_ out there, travelling across planets and saving the world?”

He waited so long she began to think he wouldn’t answer her and contented herself that they would not speak of it. The stories really were only for Margaret now, and that would be fine.

“I suppose I do.”

Joan swallowed and looked out the window, trying to guess which star John was looking at in that moment.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? I imagine myself doing things I have already done. The paradox is quite complex, really. I don’t think I could ever reason it out. But then, I’m sure he could never reason out _this_.”

At that, she turned in his lap to see what _this_ he was referring to, only to find him gazing back at her, not the stars. He leaned forward, kissed her, his lips moving lightly over hers, the tip of his tongue tasting her. His hands made up for the passion his kisses lacked, roaming her body without settling, moving from her hip to her breast to her hair and back, all fleeting and a little desperate. Without taking his mouth from hers, he moved her until her knees were on either side of his hips and unbuttoned her blouse. She didn’t make any move to undress him, or even move her hands from his shoulders, wanting to focus on the feeling his touch left on her skin.

“Is this alright?” he asked after a moment, pausing in his kissing with his fingers on the hooks of her corset. “I don’t want to rush you.”

They had not made love since Margaret’s birth, and only twice during the pregnancy despite John’s protestations at the indecency of it. Joan’s insistence that she would die if she could not have him, the moments two of the few times she had behaved at all dramatically in her entire life, had quickly worn down what little of his shyness had returned. Now she could feel him hardening beneath her, his breath coming in pants.

“Can you just hold me...and touch me?” she whispered against his lips.

“Of course.”

He helped her off of him, out of the window seat, and led her to stand beside the bed. It might have been months since they last undressed with the other, but he could still manage all her buttons and clasps with practiced ease. He undressed her with unhurried movements and gentle kisses on bared skin, guiding her to step out of skirts and petticoats and stockings when the time came. When she was naked before him, he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair. Otherwise he left his clothes on. Joan could see his erection straining against the front of his trousers in the dim light as he made his way back toward her. He appeared unbothered, if not oblivious, to it.

“Here, lie down.” He guided her, positioning the pillows beneath her head, before he settled half over her. The cold metal buttons on his waistcoat made her flinch when they pressed against her stomach, but they quickly warmed. “Stop me when you like,” he said before resuming his kisses. They were more purposeful now, his tongue seeking out the corners of her mouth. He nipped on her bottom lip and licked over the bite when she whimpered.

From there he moved downward, mouthing and swirling his tongue over the delicate skin of her neck. Her collarbones received little bites that would mean bruises the next morning where no one could see them. He nuzzled at her breasts and diligently resumed his path when the flat of his tongue against her too-sensitive nipple made her grab a handful of his hair and drag him away. By the time he was kissing the bones at her hips and trailing his fingers over the skin of her thighs, she felt like she was burning inside. She was nearly there already, needing _something_ to push herself over, needing him _there_. The soft cries she made, almost sobs, and the fact that she still had her hand in his hair, were vague to her senses. Without any clear thought, she rocked her hips, seeking out friction.

He was at the inside of each of her thighs, less a kiss and more a hot press of his open mouth. She moved her hips again and his huff of breath might have been a laugh. But he complied. His nose parted her folds and the flat of his tongue ran from her entrance to circle the clitoris. He was not slow anymore, his mouth moving frantically on her, every flick of his tongue making her arch her hips closer to him. With a groan of his own she felt travel up her spine and back to her core, he shifted on the bed. He placed one hand on her stomach and the other at her entrance, his shirtsleeves dragging against her skin, two fingers sliding into her, pushing her closer to that edge. When his teeth scraped across her and she let herself break. She kept quiet, some small cognizant part of her knowing not to wake the baby, but the rest of her was gone, floating, letting the waves of pleasure sweep through her and her legs clench around John’s ears to hold him there.

He stayed, licks fading into kisses, until she slumped back into the bed and the shaking that started in the wake of it stilled. He stayed until she remembered to take her hand from his hair, hoping her grip hadn’t thinned it too considerably. As he moved his weight onto his arms so he could hover over her, his grin was wide. Joan only gazed back with a soft smile. This man had far too much energy, she thought, as she felt herself slipping into sleep. He wiped his mouth and chin on the sleeve of his shirt — clearly Joan would be doing the laundry tomorrow, not Lucy -- and pecked a quick kiss on her mouth.

“Sleep, darling,” he said as he got out of bed. “I will be back in a little while.”

“Where are you going?”

His grin faded to a bashful grimace and he motioned at himself with a shrug. He picked her discarded clothes off the floor and draped them over the back of the chair before leaving the room, the door clicking softly after him. Joan didn’t fall asleep completely until he settled beside her a while later, wrapping his arms around her to pull her to his chest.


	12. January 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really tried to make this chapter shorter, but no luck. End of this chapter is nsfw.

It was fascinating, in an unfortunate way, how Joan seemed to become invisible when two men debated something, especially when it was something done or created or about another man. She was standing there with her arm through John's, in her best evening dress and with her hair carefully done up, looking rather pretty for a wife in the middle of her thirties, she thought, and listening to a heated debate over Shakespeare's best works.

Every year Joan lived, Martha's frustrated comments and blunt manner when speaking to or about men made more sense. Maybe, Joan mused because her attention wasn't needed anywhere else, she would be as wild as Martha by the time she reached whatever year the woman was from.

“… _Julius Caesar_ ,” the literature teacher was saying, “that is one that should always be taught.”

“Ah, but you’ve only listed the tragedies,” said John. “No reason to overlook the comedies, especially when teaching young men. A well rounded curriculum is what we need. Teach _Midsummer’s Night_ , _As You Like It_ , _Love’s Labor’s Lost_ … _Love’s Labor’s Won_ -”

“There’s no such play.”

“Sorry?”

“ _Love’s Labor’s Won_. There’s no such play.”

“Yes, with the Carrionites.”

“The _what_?”

“You’re thinking of that article you read, John,” Joan said, patting his arm. “About that tribe in the Orient?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly when John’s face remained blank.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Right.”

“ _Titus Andronicus_!” added the literature teacher, forgetting John’s slip. “We never teach that one enough.”

“ _Titus Andronicus_?” John scoffed and Joan let her thoughts drift back to Martha.

\- - -

On the walk home over slippery, snow dusted streets, John was off of Shakespeare and onto history. Joan spent the time wondering if Lucy had successfully gotten Margaret to sleep, then observing passerby on the street. With the holidays drawing near, and the village overrun with London girls come out to tend to the fields in the absence of men, the streets were crowded with revelers. She and John had to side step them as they passed.

When they came face to face with a young woman, John paused his rambling to say, “Pardon us,” and guide Joan to the side. The girl stepped with them, blocking their way.

Her hand came out of her pocket, drawing with it a white feather, a little disheveled from its place in her coat. She held it out to John who reached for it almost unwillingly, as if his gloved fingers wrapped around the shaft of it without his permission.

“Coward,” spat the girl. She turned to Joan. “How can you stand the sight of him?”

Joan didn’t wait for her to finish the words. She walked right into the girl, shoving past her and pulling John along behind. The girl stumbled a second on the ice, but caught herself, much to Joan’s dismay. If she wasn’t so focused on leading John home at a near run, she would have gone back to push the girl over.

They walked in dead silence now. When she glanced down at his hand, he was still holding the feather between his thumb and forefinger. Joan wanted to shake him, make him drop it as if he was Margaret getting into something she shouldn’t have been. She let him hold it, and he let her lead him along back to the house as if he was blind and deaf.

When they arrived at the house, Joan dragged him through the door and left him standing in the hall. She stormed into the kitchen where an alarmed Lucy jumped to her feet.

“Is Margaret asleep?” Joan asked.

“Yes, ma’am. At seven as usual.”

“Thank you. You can go for the evening.”

For a moment it looked as if Lucy would say something else, she was trying to look over Joan’s shoulder into the hall, but she only turned and went up the back stairs. Joan went back to John.

He had not moved.

“John, dear?”

He stared straight ahead at nothing, his mouth set in a deep frown.

“Where are your thoughts?” she asked, laying a hand on his chest. The touch brought his focus to her. “They were just words, John. Just words from some nobody on the street.”

"But she's not the only one saying it, is she?"

"Who is saying it?"

He walked past her, letting her hand slide off his chest, and set the feather delicately on the hall table before tearing off his gloves. He planted his bare palms against the table's edge and he bowed over them. "Who isn't saying it?" he ground out.

"I'm not. I have never once thought you a coward for not picking up a gun."

"But I can't hide in the house the entire war. I have to go outside, and then it's not only what _you_ think that matters, is it? Not when I've got eighteen year old boys heading off to die." On the last word he struck the table with a resounding thump that made Joan shrink back. Her quiet, gentle John had never done anything like that before.

She looked heavenwards, praying for resolve and calm, but didn't receive either. Her words were harsher than she'd intended when she said, "And you think following them is going to save them? All you'll do is get yourself killed."

"Better than sitting around here acting the coward."

Joan felt all the color drain from her face as she stared at his hunched back. The air was suddenly colder inside than it had been out on the icy streets and she shivered. When the words unfroze in her throat, she said tonelessly, "I'm sorry to hear you feel that way."

At once he realized what he'd said, and he straightened and turned to reach for her but she shied away, her arms tight around her stomach. His eyes went there too, finally remembering there was another child he was speaking about leaving. She was struck with the idea that it was the first time all evening he was actually paying attention to _her_. "I didn't mean it that way, Joan, please believe me. I just-"

"You think this life doesn't take bravery? That carrying on after people you care about have died, creating a family is something a coward does? You were the one that talked about the honor in small acts. Where is _that_ man?"

"It's not about honor. It's about doing something to help."

"You are one man. Do you know what difference one man males on a war front? Another body. You want to help? Stay here and look after your school and your children and your wife.”

“That’s not enough!”

Joan heard Margaret cry overhead, but neither of them acknowledged it. “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he growled in frustration and Joan felt her own anger ratchet up at being asked to understand something he did not comprehend himself. “People are out there dying.”

“Yes, John, I do understand that. I am saying that making yourself one of them will help no one and I _will not lose another husband_!”

“It’s not about you. You’re being unreasonable.”

“It isn’t about _you_ either! When you chose this, you made it about more than yourself.”

“I didn’t choose this. Some alien chose it for me. He chose to make me John Smith and leave me with all these people to save.”

Joan bowed her head and moved further away from him. There were tears prickling at the back of her eyes and she couldn’t let them fall now, not when she needed to command him to stay home. “I didn’t mean when you chose John Smith. I meant when you chose me. When you asked me to marry you.”

“Oh.”

Over her shoulder, she saw him mirroring her, mouth slack, hands useless at his sides, fighting for a calm he didn’t have. “He didn’t leave you with people to save, John,” she sighed. “He ran away from those people. The responsibility doesn’t transfer to you.”

“Because I can’t do what he could?”

Joan closed her eyes and sighed again. “Could we have one conversation in this house that does not involve the Doctor? I’m beginning to feel like I’ve married two men.”

“Like you don’t bring him up at every possible moment. Like it or not, he is part of me. There is at least some of him in me, and that part of me knows I can not sit here and do nothing when others are fighting.”

She swallowed and counted backwards from ten until she was sure the tears were gone and there was no chance her voice would break. She turned to face him straight on. The way his face rose over his slumped shoulders, his expression nearly hopeful, anticipating her reasonable advice or reassurances, would have made her feel pity if he hadn’t asked to her look past him and see the alien who, without existing, seemed poised to destroy her happiness at every turn. “I suppose you had better figure out who you are then. When you decide you are John Smith, my husband and the children’s father, then you can come back to our bed. Until then, I don’t want to sleep beside a strange man. Goodnight.”

Before the words could register and the desperate sadness could overtake his eyes, she strode from the room. It was difficult to be mad for long at him, a lesson she knew from their past small arguments. But she wanted to be mad tonight, with no temptation to forgive him. Some of it was petty. He had ignored her all night until she was called upon to be _understanding_ and _reasonable_. Some of it reminded her of Oliver. She hadn’t known at the time, when he had enlisted, what it might mean, at least not in any more than a vague sense. She knew now the reality of it. And she wanted to be furious at John for wishing that reality on her once more.

She went to the nursery first to comfort Margaret, which only served to feed her anger when the girl wouldn’t settle. That was an easy thing to blame on John and his stories and the arguing downstairs. After the baby cried herself to sleep, Joan slipped into a cold bed.

She was exhausted, but not in a way that heralded sleep.

She was exhausted from having to be the strong one all the time while John worried over the fates of humans he did not know and the past he did not have and the man he was not meant to be. She was tired of holding his hand as he navigated the grey areas she could not see, a blindness he called unreasonable.

For once, she wanted to have her hand held and hear him say he was here, with her. That he heard her, louder than the call to a life he might have had or the regrets he did not take it. Louder than the warring that apparently followed the Doctor from world to world.

And she wanted to be asked her opinion on Shakespeare sometimes.

\- - -

Joan was able to hang onto her anger well into the afternoon. It was helped along when she asked Lucy at breakfast where John was and the young woman said he’d left before sunrise. Not that she wanted to see him, but she did want him around to at least suffer through her ire in person.

By afternoon, she felt empty. She lay on her bed with Margaret cradled in the crook of her arm and her other hand over her still flat stomach and tried not to feel lonely. When Lucy woke her for dinner, her eyes felt swollen and sticky from crying.

“Where is John?” she asked when she found the table set only for her.

“A maid from the school came by to collect some clothes for him. She said he’s sleeping there. I hope I did right by giving her the clothes?” Lucy knew tact well — no doubt she’d heard the entire argument last night, even if she wouldn’t have understood all of it — and she kept her words light, even if she did seem a bit unsure.

“Yes, thank you. The dinner looks lovely.”

It did look lovely, but Joan couldn’t taste a bite of it. She lay awake in bed most of the night thinking of John.

Though she would not have described either of them as stubborn, they both lasted three more days. Joan alternated between berating him in her mind, despair, and wanting to apologize for the whole argument so she could fall asleep with him holding her again.

It was in the berating frame of mind that she marched to the school on the forth day with a packed basket of tea things. She spent the whole short walk preparing a list of all the reasons he was ridiculous. All for nothing though. When she knocked on his office door, she received no reply and found the office empty. She sat herself in his chair and proceeded to make a list of all the reasons she was sorry instead. By the time the door handle turned, she had no idea what she wanted to say.

He covered his shock quickly at finding her in his office. Without a word, he stripped out of his gown and hung it on the coat hook next to hers, his cap next to her hat. When he turned back to her, his expression was placidly expectant.

“Joan,” he said as greeting.

There was a moment of indecision in his eyes as he debated where to sit. He could not take the chair where students usually sat, not during an argument at any rate, and he could not walk through the door into the headmaster’s chambers without seeming to ignore her. Joan watched with amusement until he finally decided to lean against the edge of his desk.

“What brings you here?” he asked.

“I wanted to see my husband. And,” with a nod to the picnic basket, “I worried you’d grow even thinner with only the school food to eat.”

“I thought you didn’t think I was the man you married anymore.” He ignored her joke completely and, while not a glare, the look he gave her was far colder than anything she could remember receiving from him before.

She stared back.

When he realized she was not there to apologize, he straightened and went to his bookshelf, making a show of trying to find a book.

It was easier when facing his back and not his face to whisper, “I can’t lose you.”

He froze.

Joan waited.

“You should never have to worry about that,” he said to the bookshelf.

“How can I not after what you said?”

He turned to her until she could see his gaping mouth and wide eyes. He was afraid.

“It feels like…like you doubt me.” The words came slowly as if he was still working out what he meant to say. “You’re too worried of losing me that you can’t stop and just be with me.”

“You’re talking about going to _war_ -”

“No, I mean everyday.” He came to her side but did not try to touch her. “You are worried about a story, but I am here. Only that’s a part of me too, and I can’t get rid of it, no matter how much I want to some days. Sometimes it…” he gave an embarrassed smile that conveyed no mirth. “It seems as if you only love half of me.”

Joan felt her heart snap. There was no other reason it could have stopped beating in her chest and radiated a flare of hot pain throughout her. She flew to him, wrapping her arms around as much of him as she could. Her breath, expelled somewhere at the end of his confession, did not return. Even if she knew what to say, she did not have the voice for it, though she muttered _no, never_ and _John_ and _dearest_ and _love_ in a jumble.

His sobs made his chest shake in her arms and his tears soaked into the neck of her dress where his face was buried at her shoulder. She petted his hair, rubbed the back of his neck, and shushed him gently.

Minutes later, when her voice finally returned, a raspy whisper of its usual, and his crying subsided, she said against his ear, “Please just don’t leave. I could not bear it.”

She felt the shake of his head against her neck.

“Never.”

It surprised her how clear his voice was on that single word. How certain.

He shifted, and she thought he would rise, uncomfortable from being bent over her when he was so much taller. After an instant though, he laid his head down again, only with his lips above her collar this time. At first it was only a soft kiss, the kind she would expect after such a moment. Then he opened his mouth and touched the tip of his tongue to her skin, spiraling it until she sighed.

“I’m sorry for our fight, and the things I said.” He punctuated the words by closing his lips over her skin and sucking . “I was being selfish. I’m sorry to have caused you pain.” It was unfair of him to be stating his apologies while his tongue was swiping across the skin under her ear, especially so soon after he had cried into her dress. The abrupt change failed to unsettle her when all she could think about was tilting her head to the side to give him better access. All the carefully composed words she had scripted for herself these past few days were far away in the face of missing him and needing him close.

“Me too,” she managed. “I’m sorry you ever…” she shivered “...felt like I didn’t love you more than I could possibly put into words.” His hands were drifting down her body, faint shadows through her corset. They came to rest on her hips and pushed her to walk backwards, all without him removing his mouth from the side of her jaw. “Sorry I made you sleep here.”

“Should have come home.” She hardly heard the muffled words over the rushing in her ears. His hands were lifting her, sitting her on his desk. “I would like to have you like this,” he whispered when he was back at her ear.

“Here?” Joan exclaimed, loud enough to make John start back. “Now?” She was sorry to ruin the mood so abruptly, but as the blood had all flowed to her cheeks in that moment, there seemed little else to be done.

John grinned and released her. With slow, purposeful steps, he walked backwards, never taking his eyes from her, until he had his back against the door. Joan heard the little _click_ of him turning the key.

“There,” he said, the grin growing, if possible, wider. “The door is locked. So yes, here _and_ now.” He strolled back to stand between her knees. “I’ve missed my wife.”

He had not been uncertain in lovemaking for months now, but this was forward even for him.

“It’s been three days.” Joan sought some upper hand in this situation, some words that might make him blush instead of her, wipe that smug smile from his face. “If you can’t make it three days, you’re going to have rough months ahead now that I’m pregnant.”

With a caressing hand against her stomach, he had the audacity to say, “That’s not how I remember it when you were carrying Margaret. There was-” he made a show of looking off into the distance “-begging, if I remember correctly.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not quite like that, but close.”

“You are an infuriating man.”

He stole a kiss from her bewildered open mouth, seemingly pleased to have been called so. Meanwhile, his hand seized her skirts and began to drag them up her leg before he sobered and went still. “Is this amenable to you? I will not insist if you are uncomfortable. We _have_ just finished arguing.”

“Very amenable. I could beg if that would help?”

There was that upper hand she had been seeking. He blinked once and gave a startled laugh when he realized he had heard her correctly. She used his moment of confusion to slip the buttons of his trousers through their buttonholes and feel blindly within for the buttons of his drawers as well.

Finally he stammered out, “It certainly won’t hurt. To beg.” He resumed collecting her skirts around her hips until only her drawers obscured her legs. “Just do it quietly. You wouldn’t want the students to hear.”

She got her hand through his clothing and wrapped it around his erection, eliciting a loud groan from him at the same moment someone knocked on the door and asked, “Mr. Smith, sir? They’re serving dinner.”

John slapped a hand over Joan’s mouth, which was silly given his groan was louder than any of her whispering. But then she couldn’t help the giggles that came over her so maybe it made sense. Childishly, she licked the palm of his hand, though the way her tongue moved and she raised a challenging eyebrow was anything but childish. John’s glare sharpened on her as he replied to the messenger, “Thank you, but I will be going home. My wife wants me to come for dinner tonight.”

Joan felt her eyes go wide with shock. Where was the man she had sat astride on their wedding night when he was too shy and inexperienced to take the lead?

“Glad to hear you and Mrs. Smith aren’t rowing anymore.”

John gasped again, courtesy of Joan’s hand pumping him, her movements slow but her grip strong. “Yes,” he managed, though it was gravelly, “we are both relieved. Goodnight.”

When the sound of the intruder’s footsteps faded, John caught each of her hands in either of his, pulling the one from his cock with a noise of protest on both their parts. “You’ll pay for that trick.”

“Will I?”

He dragged her to the edge of the desk and pressed his pelvis into the space between her legs, his length, burning and hard, firmly along her. Joan let her head fall back at the pressure and he choked on his own breath. Her wetness soaked through the fabric separating them as John returned his lips to her throat, sucking at her pulse point, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, locking her ankles behind him. The movement caused the split in her drawers to gape until there was nothing between them, his cock skating deliciously through her slickness, Joan using her heels at his lower back to make him grind against her. He had to muffle his moan by pressing his open mouth against her skin.

“There does not seem,” he growled, “to be much begging.” In the circle of her legs, he managed to find a small bit of space to lean away until his cock slipped from her. Joan whimpered at the loss, thrusting her hips after him as he went and almost knocking herself off the desk. John used his grip on his waist to still her. “Tell me,” he said.

“I need you.” She threw her arms around his neck in an effort to bring him closer.

His hand moved over her breast and along her stomach until his thumb dipped within her folds to work at her clit, circling it and pressing it until her hips jerked. “How do you need me?”

“In me. Need you in me.”

He slipped in two fingers together, as deep as they would go, plunging them in and out of her with his thumb still on her clit. Immediately she forgot to tell him this was not what she meant by inside of her, too busy with biting her lip to keep from crying out as he muttered encouragements. Soon she was writhing on his hand, the firm grip around her hips all that kept her in place as the tension coiled and broke inside her, the cry finally escaping. His fingers didn’t stop moving while it lasted and as her shaking body came down, the pleasure already building again as she clenched around his fingers.

“Perfect, my love, you’re perfect.”

Her groan sounded somewhat like his name.

“What do you need, my love? Tell me, Joan. Beg for me.”

“Now. Need you. All of you. Please, John.”

He slid smoothly in, all at once, and John brought his mouth back to hers to collect her sounds, urging her to shush at the same time. His thrusts were hard and ungentle. The desk drawers rattled beneath her every time his thighs struck the desk. Her hands moved from his neck to grasp his jacket, his collar, anything to give her something to hold onto. There was a tiny clatter as a button came loose somewhere on his person and fell to the floor. She was pulling his collar tight enough to choke him and, without pausing, he reached to unwind her grip and pushed her to lie back on his desk.

All the while, she was begging for _harder_ and _faster_ and _please, John_. Each time he was fully inside of her, the fabric of his clothing brushed against the sensitive skin of her thighs and her core with a teasing light touch.

“John, _please_ ,” she moaned.

“What, love?” His frenzied movements distorted the words. “What do you need?”

“More. Need more. All of you, everything. I love everything of you.”

His hips stuttered and he gave up trying to muffle her cries. Instead he closed his eyes and tightened his grip until Joan knew the shadow of his hands would be bruised against her hips tomorrow. He mumbled an incoherent string of profanities with his head thrown back. Refusing to be left behind in his, Joan placed three fingers between her folds and circled them furiously. John’s semen was already leaking out of her with his continued thrusting, making her touch slip easily over her clit until she was coming again with her arm thrown over her mouth as she whimpered and keened and bucked her hips.

His movements stilled until they stopped, and he collapsed on top of her, his weight kept off her on his elbows. She felt his warm breath gusting against her ear as their heart rates slowed.

“ _I_ need to be quiet, hmm?” she asked when she could draw breath past her corset lacing again. “You were quite loud yourself, sir.”

“Hopefully everyone was at dinner,” he muttered. When he eventually pushed himself back to his feet, his cheeks were awash in pink, turning to red when he caught a glimpse of her. She had no doubt she looked thoroughly debauched. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and offered it to her.

“That was…” she trailed off, embarrassed and unsure as she cleaned their mingled fluids from her fingers and passed the handkerchief back.

“That was uncharastically bold...for both of us, I think.”

Joan laughed nervously. “You can’t go through the school looking like that.”

He tucked himself back into his trousers, but even when he had them done up again there was a stripe of dampness from where they had joined. He studied it for a moment, and looked back up at her with a grin.

“Oh, stop it, you,” she said primly. It was easier for her to push her skirts down and shake the wrinkles out. She went into the other room to use the mirror over the wash basin to repin her hair.

“You popped off one of the buttons for my braces,” he called. She heard him rustling around. “Found it. Don’t have anyway to sew it back on here though.”

“Don’t you have other trousers? Lucy said she sent some over.”

“Erm...I sent them back.” He poked his head of messy hair around the doorframe with a sheepish smile. “I was planning on coming back tonight...to talk, at least. Can’t say I’m sorry about the way it worked out though.” Then he disappeared again.

By the time Joan had her hair at least well enough to go beneath her hat, John had managed to adjust his jacket to hide the front of his trousers and, he showed her delightedly, found keeping a hand in his pocket allowed him to surreptitiously hold up the side of his trousers with the missing button.

Joan shook her head fondly, gave him one last kiss, and said she would see him at home.

“You don’t want to walk together?” he asked.

“I would die from blushing.”

He beamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Men._ Amirite?
> 
> Is this chapter in character? Probably not. But what is the point, I ask you, of having a teacher in your fic if there is no hooking up in the teacher's office?
> 
> No point. None.


	13. July 1916

John carefully held the weeks old baby, also named John, so Margaret could study him. Margaret was still so young though, and little could hold her attention for long, especially a baby brother. With a gibberish explanation for her disinterest, she tottered over to Joan and stuck her arms out to be picked up.

“You’re not feeling neglected already, sweetheart?” Joan asked, giving her daughter a peck on her nose when she was settled in her arms.

“She’s not.”

Joan glanced over at John who seemed to be almost unaware he had spoken. He was still playing with the baby’s hand, uncurling the fingers and watching curiously as they recurled like a flower in the evening.

“John?”

“What?” He looked up in alarm. “Oh, just that she can’t throw him across the room. Since that seems to be her favorite activity now…” With a shrug, he turned his attention back to his son.

After a bit of reflection, Joan concluded he was right and left for the kitchen, whispering to Margaret that they would see if Lucy needed help with dinner. Lucy didn’t, but she provided more stimulating conversation than John at the moment, so Joan made herself comfortable at the kitchen table with Margaret bouncing on her knee.

As Lucy was pulling the roast out of the over, John meandered in, looking dreamy and lost.

“John is hungry,” he said, with a bit of a smile. “Want to switch?”

Bemused, Joan helped him switch their children until she held baby John and the adult John held Margaret’s hand as he led her back to the sitting room.

“How does that man manage it?” Joan asked as she settled her son at her breast.

“Ma’am?”

“With both of them. They hardly cry, they go down at night without fussing. At first I thought we were merely blessed with easy children. But now I think it’s him. He seems to anticipate what they need. It’s almost as if…” she bit her lip. “As if he knows what they’re thinking.”

“He’s a good father, ma’am,” Lucy said graciously. “One of the better ones.”

Joan nodded. There was not much time to think about it afterwards with the rush of dinner and getting two children ready for bed. Joan sang baby John to sleep since he preferred lullabies to stories at his age and his father did not sing. By the time she’d finished, John was in his study working on something for school, so Joan climbed into bed with a book.

It was there John found her.

“Still awake, darling?” he asked as he entered. “It’s late.”

She checked the time on the mantle. “Lost track, I guess. It was a good book.” She let it sit against her chest as she watched him move about the room. His mind was still elsewhere, maybe on the children or his work, as he shucked his clothes and climbed into bed beside her. Joan reached over to turn the lamp down.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you so good with the children?”

She felt him roll over to face her, his attention reclaimed.

“I didn’t know I was especially good or bad with them. I thought I was rather average, actually, but I suppose I don’t have much to go on.”

“No, no, you’re very good.” She took a breath and let it out as a sigh. “It’s like you can read their thoughts.”

His disbelieving laugh came out as a snort. “What? Read their thoughts? Did you drink too much with dinner?”

“John, don’t laugh.” Bending her elbow, she propped her head on her hand and looked at him beseechingly. “I am in earnest. How do you always know what they need?”

“They’re children, Joan. It is not science. When you’re holding them, it’s very clear what they are thinking.”

“It is?”

“Well, yes. It’s nothing complex. Why are you asking these questions?”

Joan let her head fall back onto her pillow with a little bounce and a huff. “They just seem easier for you.”

He was silent for a moment. “I am sure that is not unheard of with children, darling. At different times in their lives, they connect with either parent more. For instance, do you remember when Margaret absolutely refused to fall asleep for me a few months ago? She would only do it for you.”

“Yes.”

Seemingly satisfied he had made his point, he wrapped his arms and a leg around her, pulling her to him. “You are just tired, darling, and no wonder. You have given me two beautiful children who love you dearly. What cause is there to worry over easy children, as you say? Now rest.”

\- - -

Margaret was big enough that she could walk when they went to the park, though only with Lucy holding her hand. Lucy would let the little girl pull her this way and that through the grass so they could look at leaves and flowers and patches of dirt. Smiling, Joan followed behind with John in his pram. Her husband, though school had not yet started, declared he had too much work to do and begged they walk without him.

“How ‘bout this one, Peggy?” Lucy asked, passing Margaret a wildflower. With a thrilled shout, the little girl tore it to pieces. Lucy laughed. “Here, have another.”

There was an empty bench where Joan could sit and watch them, gently pushing the pram back and forth. It was a perfect day in July with her children in a park beneath green leaves. A breeze softened what little heat there was. If Joan closed her eyes, she could not recall feeling so completely at peace.

“Hold on a second,” Lucy was saying. “You’ve done all the ones here. Let me find another one. Let me see…”

Margaret’s scream turned into a shriek.

“Peggy!”

Joan felt her moment shatter.

The little girl was on the ground, shrieking with all her might, with a sound that indicated, Joan knew, real pain. Lucy was kneeling over her by the time Joan reached them, in time to see Lucy roll Margaret over and the blood flowing from a gash below Margaret’s hairline.

“Oh, Mrs. Smith, I’m so sorry. I only turned ‘round for a moment and she walked off. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for it.”

Joan could hardly hear her over Margaret’s screaming and the roaring in her ears. She could see the rock, half hidden in the grass and crested with blood, that had caused the wound. Her body became very hot and then very cold. She took a deep breath.

“Lucy. _Lucy!_ Go get the pram. We’re going home.” Joan searched her pocket for her handkerchief and pressed it against Margaret’s head. It was a bit of a trick to pick her daughter up while holding the handkerchief in place, but she managed. She walked with long, quick strides back to the path and towards home. Lucy was slow to realize what was happening, but finally took hold of the pram and chased after.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Smith-”

“Don’t start that again. It won’t help us any.”

Except for her own quiet sobs hardly audible over Margaret’s louder ones, Lucy kept silent for the rest of the hurried walk.

By the time they reached the front garden, John was hurrying out the front door. Joan could not hear what he asked over the child shrieking in her ear. But she saw when he noticed the blood, all over Margaret and Joan’s hands and shirt. His face blanched until it looked as if he might faint. He was calm though as he took Margaret from her and carried her inside the house. Joan went to find her old nurse’s things, and Lucy finally found good sense and kept herself and baby John out of everyone’s way.

When Joan made it to the nursery, she found a grave husband watching over Margaret and still trying to stop the blood with a soaked handkerchief.

“What happened?” he asked, the words nearly moaned in despair.

“She fell and hit her head on a rock.”

“Oh, _god_. Is she…”

“She’ll be fine,” Joan said, nudging him away so she could take his place. “Honestly, you’re as bad as Lucy. Go fill that bowl with water. The kettle should still be warm from before we left.”

“But-”

“The head always bleeds worse. We’ll get it cleaned up and see what we’re dealing with. Now go!”

He returned and dutifully held the bowl while Joan cleaned the wound, not offering any other comments until Joan finished. Margaret’s shrieks quieted to whimpers, and she soon struggled to keep awake for even that much. At that point, John leaned forward and said, “You’re right, that’s not nearly as bad as I expected.”

“Nor I,” Joan replied quietly. “Not for that amount of blood.”

“But this is good, isn’t it?” He looked from Joan to Margaret and back.

“That wound looks two days old.”

“What do you mean?”

She rose and took the water bowl from him. The pink water disappeared into the bathroom sink and Joan scrubbed her hands. She had expected to be giving her daughter stitches. As it was, the wound hardly needed a plaster. She shook her hands dry and returned to the nursery.

“Joan, I don’t understand what’s happening.” John’s voice was concerned again. “Margaret’s fine. Isn’t that what we wanted?”

“How did you know she was hurt?” His eyebrows came together and Joan could tell he was about to make an entirely unhelpful comment so she added, “You were outside from the moment we entered the gate. How did you know?”

His brow stayed creased and his mouth fell open. “I...I don’t know. I just knew she was hurt. I didn’t stop to think.” He rose, towering above her when she was so close, but not touching her. “What are you saying?”

“Do you remember your journal?”

It took a moment for him to catch up with the change of subject, but he nodded, and Joan dropped her gaze to his shoulder.

“The Doctor could read thoughts-”

“I can’t read thoughts.”

“-and he healed quickly. What would take weeks for a human took a couple of days for him.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think there is something of him in our children.”

He seized her elbows, making her jump at the suddenness of it. “Joan, no, these are our children.”

“I’m not saying they aren’t. But if part of _him_ is still in you, it seems to have found its way into our children too.” She nodded uselessly to where Margaret was now sleeping. “Maybe not much, but a little.”

“Joan, no. That’s not…” He didn’t resist when she pulled away from him. “That’s not what happened. They are just...just children, they heal quickly.”

“It would make sense you can know their thoughts and not mine, not others. You are more closely connected to them, and if they have the ability too…And you wouldn’t have known anything was different. You wouldn’t have known it wasn’t like that for me.”

“Joan, please hear me. I didn’t...I wouldn’t have…” He growled and turned away from her, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “If I had known…”

“We must be practical.” She began to pace. “I think nothing is too noticeable, but there might still be questions, from both others and the children.”

“I passed this onto them, didn’t I?” John asked.

“The healing we can probably explain away. People naturally heal at different rates. The mind reading, we’ll probably have to explain to them, at least.” She stopped pacing to look at him. “What do you…” She gestured at her head and watched the shifting behind his eyes as he struggled to quiet his thoughts enough to understand what she meant.

“See?” he gasped finally. “Very little. Only flashes of a feeling. If they’re hurt, or scared. Not much you couldn’t discern from their faces, and only when I’m holding them. Today was the first time I’d felt anything without being with them, and you were still near the house when I felt it.”

“Oh. Well, we obviously shouldn’t tell them until they’re old enough to understand. And we should perhaps see how it works with them, if it’s stronger or-”

“ _Joan._ ”

“And there might be other things we still don’t know about . I suppose we will have to be more watchful-”

“Joan.”

“Maybe when they’re ten, or maybe thirteen. John, what do you think?” She turned only to find he had left the room. If he made any noise as he went, she hadn’t heard it. Now, her train of thought gone, she wandered out after him. “John?”

He was sitting on the window seat in their bedroom, his knees curled into his chest and his hands pressed into his eyes.

“John, what is it?”

When he didn’t respond, she went and perched beside him on the window seat. Her emotions had carried her away, adrenaline from running home with Margaret, and the fear and pain. In the silence, she finally wondered what it must have been like to not only have felt those for her child, but to have them thrust into her mind. John was not a practical man at the best of times, and while she was blathering on about what they should do, he was sitting here.

“She’s fine, John,” Joan soothed. “You will be chasing her through the garden again by the end of the week.”

“But we have to tell her, don’t we?”

“Yes, I think they must know they can read thoughts.”

He raised his head. “And about me.”

“Only if you want to, and not for years.” She took his hands and wrapped them in both of hers. “I will do whatever you like. If you want to be John Smith to them forever, you can be. Reading thoughts can be some strange trait that runs in your family. If you want to tell them of the... _your_ past adventures, you can do that too.”

“But you are not angry? That they are…like him?”

“Oh, John, no. I am practicing loving all of you. Some days are easier than others.” Joan smiled briefly. “Today is a harder one.”

He nodded in fervent agreement.

“But I love you,” Joan continued, “and I love our children, and if after all these years you thought a little mind reading was going to change that, you must not remember our first date very well.”

He laughed a watery laugh.

“Sorry I panicked,” Joan said. “My excitement got the better of me. It is a bit different when it’s my own child as opposed to one of the boys at the school.”

With a kiss to her knuckles, he said, “Thank you for being practical. My wife is so very good at being practical when things seem like they are falling apart.”

“That’s why nurses make the best wives. We are always practical and we knock sense into our dreamer husbands when they need it. That being said, I might well start crying tonight after you turn out the lamp.”

“I will be there to hold you if you do. Or even if you do not.” He placed another kiss to the back of her hand.


	14. December 1916

The house was looking particularly festive this year. It was the first time John and Joan had invited guests to for Christmas. Admittedly it was only Joan’s parents, but she wanted to impress them. Usually she went to them for the holidays, and not the other way around since Oliver had died. They wouldn’t notice what the house looked like or what Joan served anyway, as they were more anxious to see baby John for the first time and discover how big Margaret had grown.

“Are you sure you can handle all the food on Christmas day, ma’am?” Lucy asked again as she stirred a custard on the stovetop.

Joan mock glared at her over the household ledger. “Yes, Lucy. I can cook, you know. Besides, you and I will have everything prepped by tomorrow, and then I only need put things in the oven on Christmas day. Why are you so worried?”

“No reason.” She stirred thoughtfully for a moment before asking, “But who’ll watch the children?”

“My parents. I don’t think Margaret or John’s feet will touch the ground while they’re here.”

“Right, ma’am.”

There was a knock on the kitchen door frame and Joan looked up to see John standing there. His hat was in his hand and there were lines showing on his forehead.

“Lucy,” he acknowledged. “Joan, could I talk to you?”

Joan followed him out into the sitting room, immediately asking, “What is it? Why are you home so early? What’s happened? Is it the children?” That last part was pure panic. John had been at school and Joan herself had put the children down for their naps only ten minutes ago. For him to know something was wrong before her, even if he was more sensitive to their thoughts, was absurd.

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” His manner relaxed at once and he sat on the couch, patting the cushion beside him. “I merely have a favor to ask of you and I’ve unfortunately put you in the position of having to say yes. I was a bit distracted.”

“But what is it?”

“Timothy Latimer is back from the front. Do you remember him?”

“Of course. Is he...why was he sent home?”

“Medical discharge,” John said, waving his hand as if it was nothing. “A bit of shrapnel. He doesn’t have family about though, and I invited him to come for dinner on Christmas. I know your parents are arriving tomorrow, but he doesn’t need a place to stay or anything. I’m lending him my rooms at the school until the holiday is over. I’m afraid I offered before I could ask you.”

“No, of course we’ll have him.” Joan rose, already thinking about what extra Lucy and she would need to make, and if she should send Lucy to the grocers one more time.

“But, Joan, listen…” John grasped her hand before she could wander off. He pulled her back to sit beside him. “He’s shell-shocked. It is not good.”

“I’ve seen shell-shocked soldiers before, John.”

“I know, darling. I just don’t want you or your parents to be alarmed.”

“My mother was a nurse too, remember? Mr. Lat—sorry, Private Latimer is very welcome for Christmas. While we are inviting people though,” Joan added with a sudden thought, “might we ask Lucy to stay for dinner as well?”

“She doesn’t want to spend the day with her family?”

“Seems to have some aversion to it. I haven’t been able to determine what, but I thought I should at least give her the option.”

“Well then let’s,” John said with a bright grin. “The more people, the better.”

\- - -

Christmas dinner, despite all the people around the table, was hardly formal. They used the nice dishes and linens, and the candles made the room glow, but Margaret spent the evening crawling around her grandparents’ legs, baby John upturned a plate of potatoes, Latimer dropped a fork in surprise when one of the children shouted, and everyone else laughed and talked loudly and drank a little too much. Lucy, perhaps the most polite of the bunch in exchange for being invited at all, attempted _please_ s and _may I_ s until she realized no one, not even Joan, was doing the same. Spirits were too high, and Joan could not bring herself to care with her family about her.

“Can I get you more roast, Tim?” Joan asked. She called him Private Latimer when he arrived, and he quickly requested she use his name. It was strange, he said, having his old nurse calling him Private. Joan agreed, so long as he not call her Matron.

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith, but I couldn’t eat any more.”

“Who should I thank for the delicious food?” Joan’s father asked, far louder than was necessary.

“It was mostly Lucy.”

“Miss Lucy, you have a gift.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the girl with her head bowed to hide her blush.

“Indeed, Lucy,” said John, “I don’t think I have had a better meal in my life. Your tart was better even than the ones I had on Ruun Jowhar, and they’re known for their tarts.”

“Where is known for their tarts?” Joan’s mother asked.

“It’s a town in Africa, mother,” Joan said. “John traveled extensively as a young man.”

“Africa, how fascinating. You must tell me about it! Now, Margaret, don’t put that in your mouth.”

“More roast, Latimer?” John practically shouted down the table.

It was a relief to leave the men to their brandy and retreat to the quiet sitting room. Joan’s mother insisted on taking the children to bed, so Joan ushered Lucy into a seat and poured coffee for the two of them.

“You look exhausted,” Joan said.

“My family’s never like this on holidays.” She followed with a shy smile. “I like it.”

Joan sipped delicately at her coffee. “You don’t have to answer this, Lucy, but why didn’t you want to be home this Christmas? Is your mother well?”

“My brother’s missing, ma’am. He was in France and we haven’t got any letters from him in months. My mother is...well, my mum won’t get out of bed.”

“Lucy.” Joan went to sit next to the poor girl and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You should have said something. We could have helped.”

“What could you have done, ma’am? He’s in France. And I know how Mr. Smith feels about the fighting. I didn’t want to cause another row.”

“Nonsense, Lucy. We would have given you days off, or found someone to help your mother.”

Lucy shrugged. “Honestly, ma’am, I’ve done all I think I can for her. I just wanted to be somewhere else. Is that bad of me?”

With a sigh, Joan hugged Lucy tighter to her side. “No, dear. But if you like, maybe you and I could take her some of the left over food tomorrow?”

The young woman nodded. They sat in companionable silence for another few moments, listening to the men’s conversation drift through the wall, until Lucy set her half empty cup down and asked to be excused for the night. With her gone, Joan sat alone, nearly dozing, until the door opened.

“My dear, if we had known you were sitting here all by yourself we would have come through sooner,” said John. He poured coffee and turned back to Joan’s father. “Now, Mr. Edwards, if you want to take such a wide view of history, then I suppose you _could_ say that—”

“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” said Tim quietly. “May I sit with you?”

“Please.” She motioned to the chair across from her. “When did you get back?”

“I was two weeks in the hospital for this.” He shrugged his shoulder to indicate the arm in a sling. “Then I’ve been out two weeks since.” His words tapered off and he stared at the middle distance, scratching his ear. Joan took the moment to study his thin cheeks and hollow eyes. He had grown taller in the intervening years, but the face beneath his expression still looked young. The contrast was disheartening. “You and Mr. Smith,” Tim said as if remembering he was meant to be conversing, “You’ve been well?”

“There are unhappy moments, but yes, we have been very blessed.”

“He is still human.”

“Martha never found the watch. There was no way from him to change back.”

“Yes, I know about the watch. Martha is a nurse now. I’ve seen her a few times. I just wondered…Sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about this.”

“You were wondering if he had changed without the watch?”

Tim nodded.

“He has not turned back into a…an alien, but he has changed. So have I.”

“Yes. Your children…They’re like him. When I had the watch, it spoke to me, told me about him, who he was, what he’d done. It was frightening, and wonderful. It’s not quite the same with the children, but I catch bits of thoughts.”

“We had noticed some…unusual traits. John can sense their thoughts. I can’t.”

“I think it’s certain people more than others. I always seemed to know things about people. For the longest time, I thought I was just good at guessing, but after the Doctor…”

“That must have made it hard.” When he turned to her with a silent request for clarification, she added, “At the front.”

“Yes.”

“Is it so bad as they say? You hear stories and I’ve seen the photos.”

“It’s worse. Most of the boys from out class died.” He blinked. “I saved Hutchinson, but all the others died.”

“Have you told John that?” she gasped.

“He already knew. It was in the papers.”

“Of course. I forgot that he hangs on every word in those papers.”

“I think I’ll head back to the school.”

“Oh, Tim, I’m sorry. Here it is Christmas and I’m talking about war. Please forgive me-”

“No, please don’t concern yourself. It’s only that I get these headaches now and only sleep seems to cure them.”

“Would you come again for dinner? We’d be happy to have you so long as you’re staying.”

Tim promised he would and they all saw him off down the chilly streets back to the school.

“Anyone who thinks politics is worth the life of young men like that should be put in prison,” Joan said quietly, grasping John’s hand as Tim faded from view.

John didn’t reply, but he squeezed her hand in return.

\- - -

Latimer did come for dinner several more times over the next days, and tea on a few occasions after Joan’s parents left and the house was quieter. John landed on a plan to recommend Latimer to Oxford to become a professor himself and would discuss the idea at length with the young man. He spoke of his intelligence and the shortage of teachers the war caused and of having a post assured at Farringham when he returned. Latimer said he would consider it, but was not ready to plan for anything yet.

If they spoke of other topics — the missing watch, the war, the Doctor — they did it outside of Joan’s hearing. For her part, Joan kept to light topics, and found conversations she could almost carry on one-sided. When she realized Margaret’s shouting and John’s crying bothered Latimer, she sent Lucy with them to the nursery whenever he visited.

At the end of the holiday, when Joan had become accustomed to setting the dinner table for him, he announced he would be leaving.

“Have you considered anymore on entering a university?” John asked.

“No. I’m actually thinking of travelling for a few years. Martha suggested it to me when I last saw her.” With a humorless laugh, he said, “I am hardly ready to teach boys, if I ever will be, but some time away from people might do me well. I mean no offense by that, you understand. You both have been most welcoming and this has been one of the loveliest Christmases.”

“We were very glad to have you, Tim,” Joan said. “You are always welcome.”

“Yes, both here and at the school,” John added. “May I walk with you up to the school? I need to fetch a book from my office.”

Joan was in bed by the time John returned. He didn’t undress as he usually did, but sat at her vanity and opened a book. Raising herself on an elbow to watch, Joan waited for him to explain. When he didn’t, she asked, “Is that the book you needed, dearest?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, this is the book.”

“What book is it?”

To that he didn’t respond, so Joan got out of bed and wrapped her dressing gown around her shoulders. He flinched in surprise when she placed a hand on his shoulder.

“What book is it, John?”

He slid to the side in his chair so she was able to peer over his shoulder, his movement a silent request. Joan found the book before him was not a book at all, but a journal. She vaguely recognized it as the one she gifted him all those Christmases ago before they were married. Somewhere in there was a sketch of her with her hair loose around her shoulders.

The pages he had it open to were not so nice. They were drawings of sandbags and wires and gas and mud. What John had drawn looked like the grainy photographs Joan had seen in newspapers, only closer up, as if the viewer was standing in a trench. She shifted until she was leaning over him, her hands planted on his shoulders for balance.

“John?”

“I had these dreams, back when the war started. I suppose my other self had seen it and hearing about it again...I don’t know, it brought back those memories. They stopped after a while.” He brushed his hands across the page as if removing dust.

“Oh, John, why didn’t you say?”

“Like I said, they went away.”

“And now?”

“The day Latimer came back to the school, he had...a sort of episode, similar to the ones you hear about...in other soldiers. We were just out walking and it was a motorcar that did it. It backfired and he panicked.”

“Was he alright?”

Joan felt John’s shoulders shrug beneath her hands. “After a while, yes. I got him back to my office. It was his pride more than anything and, well you saw him. He is on edge. The memories are bad enough, but then to worry about shell shock too?” He fell silent again.

“What does this have to do with the journal?”

“Seeing him, hearing him talk about _feeling_ those around him die…” John turned the page in his journal. “The dreams started again.”

The images were different now. Not mud and trenches. In fact Joan couldn’t name what she was seeing. Violent lines and shading had left tears in the page depicted explosions and loss and desolation. If the weapons she saw, the means of fighting, were different, the outcome was not.

“What war is this?” Joan murmured.

“A war he fought in. There hasn’t been a name. Normally I know where I am in the dreams, all those strange places and people. It’s like my dream self is afraid to think of this. He lost everything.” He absently turned another page and revealed scribbled text. “Latimer saw it. It was out on my desk. I find writing it down is the only way to make sense of it. But he told me he had seen it in that watch. He told me about everything he had seen. Everything the Doctor had done.”

For the longest time, Joan did not know what to say. She wanted to comfort John for having to experience any war, even secondhand, and say she was sorry she had not realized he was having nightmares. She wanted to reassure him that he need not be afraid to mention the Doctor. She wanted to hold him and convince him that _he_ would not lose everything, not while she was there. But none of that would unravel his tangled thoughts where his hands killed and his heart broke and yet he was here with no real memory of any of it.

Joan wrapped her arms around him. “What can I do, John? What can _we_ do?”

“Nothing.” He sighed. “I just wish I could be only John Smith. Not some great hero. I wish the only people I wanted to save were those I care about. I’ve seen what’s out there though, what...what _I’m_ capable of, both good and bad. But I wish I could forget it. All I want is to be here with you, and Margaret and John. I feel...tired, and all I’ve done is teach.” He closed the notebook and ran a hand through his hair. “I was hoping sharing with you would help the dreams, or the nightmares at least.”

“Do you want me to read your journal?”

“No. These are not kind stories. I just knew I would feel better if…” He folded his hands in his lap and hung his head as if he was ashamed of needing her. It made Joan’s heart swell.

“Come to bed,” she said. “You’ll feel better after a night’s sleep.”

He followed her obligingly and let her hold him through the night. When she asked in the morning if he had dreamt anything, he said he had not. The journal was gone by the time Joan sat at her vanity and John brought hothouse roses home at tea time.


	15. September 1917

Martha’s visit was heralded, with one day’s notice, by a telegram.

“One day’s notice, John!” Joan exclaimed as she collected the plates after dinner. “That’s hardly enough time to prepare a room. Besides, what will Lucy think, having to serve...Martha? Perhaps where she is from it is reasonable to drop in on people without notice.”

“If we consider her a friend,” said John as he helped Margaret climb onto his knee before hiding both their faces behind the evening paper, clearly unconcerned over the domestic disaster unfolding before him, “and I believe we do after everything, then it is hardly unreasonable for her to drop by with short notice. You had best talk to Lucy though if you think she’ll say anything. You know how Martha is.”

“You’re not worried she’s come to convince you to bring _him_ back?”

At that, John finally folded his paper and set it aside. “I know myself better now than I did then. Are you afraid she will come back and sweep me off my feet?”

Joan set her dishes down and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t make light of it.”

“But are you afraid of that?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about with her coming here. Besides, I should like to know how she’s gotten on these past three years.”

“I won’t have time to clean the house with this being Lucy's day off.”

John swiveled his head to look around the dining room, going so far as to lean out of his chair to look past Joan into the drawing room. “Does the house need cleaned?”

“Oh, you are insufferable.” She picked up the dishes and stomped to the kitchen.

Through the open door, she could hear John whisper conspiratorially to Margaret, "How does it look to you? Perhaps it isn't spotless, but nice and lived in? Yes?"

Margaret responded with a serious, "No clean."

"Exactly."

\- - -

Lucy and Joan prepared a lovely tea for Martha's arrival, but it did little to alleviate the discomfort of small talk. They had too much familiarity to care what the weather was like wherever Martha had been and too many manners to simply ask where that was. For her part, Martha seemed bemused at seeing John and Joan sitting opposite her, playing the host and hostess with a shocking degree of normalcy. She kept forgetting herself and staring at John, her mouth slightly open. Joan tried not to notice it.

“Your trip went well, then?” Joan asked, then worried she had already asked that when Martha arrived half an hour ago.

As Martha turned to Joan, she closed her gaping mouth with a click of her teeth. “Yes, it did.”

Joan nodded politely and they fell quiet again. Tired of trying to break the silence when the other two were being no help, Joan busied herself with drinking her tea and resolved to let the awkwardness continue indefinitely. It seemed like it would have, too, if Margaret hadn’t torn through the room, John stumbling along behind her. She ran right for Joan, crashed onto her knees, and did her best to hide behind her mother’s skirts, though she was a bit too big to do so anymore. Finding himself abandoned, baby John took stock of the room before padding his way over to Martha.

They had been silent before. Now Joan realized they were all holding their breaths. Martha’s mouth was hanging open again.

When John got close enough, he gently struck Martha’s knee with a little fist.

“Hello, there,” Martha said, snapping back to herself. She bent forward to pick him up and hold him in her lap. “What’s your name?”

“That’s John” Joan said. “This is Margaret. She usually isn’t shy.” Joan looked sideways at the adult John, wordlessly imploring him to start talking. He was frozen in place.

“It’s strange,” Martha said suddenly. She was watching the baby as she spoke. “It’s like, all these years, I pictured you living your life here, but I always pictured the Doctor.” Joan felt John twitch beside her. Whatever he said about knowing himself better, he had either been lying or overconfident. Martha plowed on, “And I don’t know if I pictured you fighting aliens up here in this village or what, because I never pictured this. You, married...with two children. It’s just strange.” She returned to playing with the baby.

“And you?” John asked thickly. “What have you been doing?”

“I’m a nurse. I was at the front for a while, but they have me at a hospital in London now. It’s been about the best I can do for now, though I know more than most of the doctors,” she finished bitterly.

“Have you...found a way…”

“To get home? No.” Baby John began to cry and she returned him to the ground. He ran to crawl beneath the coffee table. “Not that I haven’t been trying. I meet lots of people and hear lots of stories. We’ve got people travelling all over now, sharing things they’ve heard. I’ve chased every rumor. A few people even believed my story. Most of the ones who said they could help have been cracks though. A person in Belgium had actually met you, or the Doctor at least. What about you?” She looked directly at John. “Has he ever come back, even for a moment?”

“Nothing. Dreams, but nothing else. I have only ever been John Smith.”

Martha nodded. “And the war? You’re not eligible for conscription, thank god.”

“No, uh...I’m exempt because of the teaching. I was…” John cast a glance at Joan and trailed off, looking over to where their son’s foot was poking out from beneath the table.

“You are not thinking about going to war?” Martha asked sharply, guessing what he had been about to say.

“I considered it.”

“You _can’t_.”

“ _You_ did.”

“Yes, because you know what I’ve realized all these years stuck here?” Martha asked. She waited until John was focused on her, watching with horrified anticipation before she spoke. “ _I_ don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I’m here or there, not in the grand scheme of things. My family might miss me, but the universe won’t.”

Joan opened her mouth to interrupt and closed it again. They were harsh words, yet true. When she herself thought on what the Doctor had done and where he had been, the vastness of the universe, she felt small. She was here, content with her husband and her children and her village. Out there was a man who crossed worlds and time, and the thought of him made Joan feel trivial and not safe.

“You -- both of you -- are like me. The world won’t care when we go. But then there’s the Doctor,” Martha continued, her voice taking on that wistful tone Joan had not forgotten, “and he’s bigger than all of it. Other people know about him, all over the world and time. He’s a story and he’s hope. People will die if he does. People will suffer. So I can’t let him die, which means I can’t let you die. Not as long as you have his body.”

John swallowed, his throat bobbing. His eyes were wide and his fists clenched on his knees.

“That’s what I’m doing,” Martha said. “I’m helping people and I’m saving your life cause some day, the Doctor is going to come back, and you’re going to have to be here for it. It doesn’t have to be now, or this year, but someday we’re going to need him again and he’ll come back. He asked me to watch out for you, and he was right. He’s always right.”

The words sent them back into silence, tense now rather than awkward. Joan looked from John to Martha and back, wishing she knew what to say to any of it, wishing she wasn’t the most insignificant of the three of them. There was nothing new, save that Martha now seemed to await the Doctor’s return not for her own sake, but that of the universe’s.

The suddenness of John rising from his seat made the other two start. He stood so stiffly, towering above them, his arms trembling, his jaw clenching and releasing as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak without shouting. That was all Joan could see from where she sat, but given the way Martha drew back, she could only guess what was in his expression. Martha had not yet seen John angry, the timid man she underestimated fallen away. Joan remembered her own shock the first time she saw it, when John insisted he would go to war, would try to emulate the Doctor.

John huffed out a breath. “Please excuse me, ladies. I have business to attend to. Good afternoon.” He strode from the room without looking back at either of them, though he did stop to pick up baby John on the way, muttering they ought to take a walk before the weather grew cold.

If Martha wasn’t paralyzed in shock, Joan expected she would run from the house. She did have the good sense to look ashamed, her cheeks glowing as she turned to Joan almost desperately. Joan raised an eyebrow.

“Why must you do that?” she asked quietly. She might have been asking if her guest wanted more tea. “It’s cruel.”

“Because the Doctor is so much bigger than us. He saves the world. John Smith can’t do that.”

“Yes, he knows. Why do you think he wanted to go fight? He thought _this_ wasn’t enough, and it has taken us three years for him to finally begin to understand that it is. Why do you have to come here and ruin that? He is a person with his own thoughts and hopes. Yet you tell him that he’s nothing when his only misfortune is sharing the body of another man who thinks he can play with other people’s lives.”

“But if he were the Doctor, just think what he could do. People are out there _dying_ without him.”

“Are you saying that this war wouldn’t be happening if my husband did not exist and we had your Doctor instead?”

Martha bowed her head slightly in concession. “Well, no, the war still happens-”

“So,” Joan cast her eyes to the ceiling, “neither man can prevent people from dying, but one of them chose to run away and hide.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Martha seemed about to cry. “You don’t know what would have happened if the Family had got ahold of the Doctor. He was protecting us.”

“He chose to become John Smith. What if that’s who he wanted to be?”

“It can’t be. Three months, he said. That was all it was supposed to be. He left me instructions.”

“And did the instructions tell you what to do if he didn’t want to change back? If he fell in love?”

“He wouldn’t have thought of those things,” Martha muttered.

“Then why would John ever want to go back?” Joan rose and collected the tea things onto the tray. She would need to find Lucy and see why the children had gotten away. Margaret had gone and fallen asleep on the rug, unaware her mother’s skirts were no longer offering a hiding place. “Will you be staying for dinner?” Joan asked over her shoulder as she went for the kitchen.

Margaret nodded mutely.

\- - -

She stayed until after breakfast the next morning when her train was due to depart. John surprised them both by joining them for dinner and breakfast, though was absent the rest of Martha's visit. When he was around them, he played the part of husband, host, and father with such exacting perfection Joan almost cried. It was cold and empty.

When he came to bed in that same manner, wished her goodnight with a perfunctory kiss, she did cry, silently and curled on her side.

They had come so far, together and on their own, learning and creating each other in turns. Joan had not realized she no longer felt threatened that John might leave her until the threat was spoken anew in her parlor.

She woke the next morning and helped Lucy dress the children and get breakfast on the table and made small talk, playing her role with the same skill as John.

Only when she saw John off to school, the two of them standing alone in the hall, facing each other without touching, did Joan drop the facade.

"May I come take tea with you today?" she whispered. She glanced at him through her lashes, afraid she would see his cold eyes looking back at her.

But his eyes were wide and shining. He raised a hand to brush a strand of her hair away from her temple, then ran his thumb across her cheek.

"You are always welcome for tea," he murmured. "Don't let her words upset you. I am not some placeholder for a better man.” His lips met hers in a tender kiss without heat or passion, just a gentle meeting of their mouths. Joan heard herself sigh.

They would be fine.


	16. January 1918

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting! I'm so enjoying everyone's feedback. Hope you're all staying safe and sane.

Lucy acted strange for three days before she shyly asked Joan if she could speak with her. After a glance over her shoulder to make sure John was still hidden away in his study, Joan indicated Lucy should follow her to the parlor. She had known for a while now, after confirming Lucy was not ill, that she had something to say, and Joan planned to have the conversation not in the kitchen. If Lucy was going to turn in her resignation, she thought it best to happen in the parlor like any other business transaction.

Unfortunately it seemed Lucy was not comfortable in the parlor unless she was serving. She sat delicately on the edge of a chair and, though her hands crossed in her lap, she didn’t stop twisting her fingers around each other in ever changing patterns.

“Well, Lucy, what is it?” Joan prompted when Lucy did nothing more than stare at the mantlepiece.

“I’m with child,” Lucy whispered. Her voice was so quiet Joan almost missed the final word.

Joan felt her mouth fall open and she let out a long breath instead of words. Polite, kind Lucy. She was eighteen now, yet she seemed so young. Joan would never have expected it. But then, had someone taken advantage of the poor girl?

“Who...uh...who is the father, Lucy?”

The girl raised her tearful face and said, her voice shaky, “His name is Samuel. He-he’s a soldier. We...fell in love.”

With another breath, Joan fidgeted with the hem of her apron. She had been so ready to hear Lucy was going, leaving for a bigger house or a job in a shop or maybe even marriage. There had been some idea she might ask Lucy to stay, offer her more money or another day off. Not only was Lucy a strong worker and so good with the children and at least vaguely aware of her employers’ oddities, Joan thought of her, in many ways, as a friend.

Joan did not consider herself the sort to be friends with mothers who bore children out of wedlock.

“Are you and this soldier...married? Or intend to be so?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And where is he now?”

“Back at the front.”

Joan nodded.

“I’ve have to leave now, don’t I, ma’am?” Lucy asked. The tears came in earnest now, pouring forth in furious sobs. "'S'alright, Mrs. Smith. You shouldn't have me at the house disgracing you and Mr. Smith, 'specially with him being headmaster."

A memory flickered in Joan's mind, of John holding get on the sofa in his rooms, asking what could be improprietous about their relationship if he loved her, headmaster or not. Joan sighed.

"Your soldier, does he know?"

"I wrote him." She shrugged, the movement tinged with defeat. "He hasn't written back."

"And how far along are you?"

"Six months."

"Lucy!" Joan's gasped. Without conscious thought, Joan glanced over Lucy's figure. How had she not noticed? Had there been no morning sickness while she was making breakfast? Did she not fill out her dresses more than before? Yes, now that Joan looked, Lucy was bigger beneath her skirt and apron. Her eyes were bloodshot and hair not in its usual neat bun. Joan had not noticed those differences either. Perhaps they did not share the friendship Joan thought. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Lucy wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “I didn’t want to go.”

“What’s your mother said?”

“I’m not allowed at home anymore.”

“Do you have somewhere else to live?”

Head bowed, Lucy muttered, “No, ma’am. I was going to go to the church when my time came.”

“That will be soon. You won’t be able to work for much longer.”

She nodded.

“Oh, Lucy, what were you thinking?” Joan sighed, which made Lucy’s crying resume. She leaned forward to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder, but doubted it offered much comfort. “We can keep you on until you begin your lying in. After that…I’ll talk with John. We might be able to help you in some way. Now dry your tears.” Joan passed her handkerchief over. “You must think of yourself and your baby now. This isn’t the time for tears.”

Lucy sniffled and wiped her eyes, quieting her sobs until she could say a trembling, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll talk with John. You should go to your room, and we can handle the dishes tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

“None of that now. I haven’t done anything for you. Go get some sleep.”

For several minutes after Lucy stumbled off, Joan sat alone in the parlor, wondering at herself and that she couldn’t send Lucy away, sending her to bed with hope of help instead. When had that become her reaction to such news? Was it only Lucy, or would she offer to help any unwed mother who showed up on her doorstep? She would have handled this with the detached practicality of a nurse before. Had that changed when she married John, or when she’d had her own children? Or, Joan thought with a sigh as she rose and went to John’s study, was it Martha’s doing?

John acknowledged her knock with a distant _hmm_ , so Joan was unsurprised to find him leaning back in his chair, staring out the window. He did not turn to look at her.

“May I speak with you?” Joan asked.

Still without looking at her, he used his head to motion to an empty chair by the wall. Joan dragged it to his desk opposite him, but found sitting there made her feel distinctly like a student facing a headmaster. The thought flashed in her mind that she would need to convince John to let Lucy clean in here soon before she realized Lucy would not be here to do it. The collection of unshelved books and newspapers and sketches and broken pens her distractible husband collected on his desk would fall to Joan to put away. There was an empty glass in the disarray too, and though Joan saw no bottle, there were two droplets of liquid on the evening’s newspaper so she knew the glass had not long been empty. For some reason, the sight sent a spark of anger through her. While she dealt with household crises and contemplated her changing thoughts, he was sitting here drinking.

“Lucy is pregnant.”

“Oh.” He still wasn’t looking at her.

“We will have to let her go.”

“Oh?”

“She is not married.”

“Yes, dear, as you say.”

Joan puffed out her cheeks before exhaling noisily. It wasn’t that easy, was it? At least he could offer his thoughts, if not a discussion. “John, I’m trying to talk to you.”

He finally turned away from the window and to her, though it took another moment for his eyes to focus and whatever thoughts distracted him to disintegrate. With measured patience, he asked, “What did you want to talk about?”

“About me sacking Lucy.”

“Why?”

“Because she is pregnant.”

John was focused on her, his eyes were clear, but there was no recognition of her words. There was no change to his expression. He simply stared on.

“And she is not married.”

No response.

“Do you disagree?” Joan prompted, her eyebrows rising.

“About?”

She managed to stifle whatever noise she was about to make. She strongly suspected it would have been a scoff, but considered an outright laugh might have been a possibility. Instead, she looked at the ceiling, counted to ten, and said through clenched teeth, “Lucy has had an affair with a soldier who has since...left. They are not married, and she is with child. I think...the proper course of action, is that we must let her go. What do you think?”

His eyes went a bit wider and moved past her and she understood his thoughts. She was asking for an answer he did not have. Again Joan was reminded of laying half on him on his sofa, assuring him she would let him know if he did anything to disgrace her.

Then it clicked. She saw it happen, his gaze snap to hers, and she no longer needed to hear him explain his opinions.

“Yes, you’re quite right,” he said. “She’ll have to be let go.”

“I would like to keep her on for a few more months. She has nowhere to go. And then, maybe,” she shifted in her seat, “we could do something to help her? I admit I don’t know quite what.”

His expression will still a bit blank, but there was a fondness in the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, but something calm. “Certainly.” He stood. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

Joan was left sitting there with her mouth half open. There hadn’t even been time to return his goodnight wish before he was gone. For a long time, she only looked at the seat he had left before she rose with a sigh and began to clean. She had already felt as if she was unwanted when she entered his study, and now his abrupt departure made her suspect that same feeling if she tried to enter her bedroom.

So she put his sketches into a pile and straightened his pens. When she picked up the empty glass, it left a perfect ring around part of the headline on the newspaper beneath. _Parliament extends draft._ There was an entire article with it, but Joan couldn’t bear to read it. She caught snippets. _Previously exempted men now included._ Men should now report with their group number to their local war office. Joan set the glass down again and left the room.

The lights were off in the bedroom, but there was a bar of bright moonlight across the floor and the bed. John was lying on his side, facing the window. From the sound of his breathing, Joan knew he wasn’t asleep.

She undressed by moonlight and memory, putting her folded clothes neatly away. The whole time, she stayed as quiet as she could, though there was no danger of waking him. Even as she slipped into bed behind him, she moved silently and slow, wrapping an arm around his waist and tugging herself close until her chest was pressed against his back. His measured breaths faintly shifted her on the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He didn’t reply, didn’t move.

“Have you been called?”

“Not yet.” His voice was no louder than the rustling of the quilt as Joan stretched to touch her forehead to the back of his head.

“Will you appeal it?”

“No.”

She brushed her lips over the bone at the top of his spine.

“If they call me, I will go.”

Joan felt her throat close and realized she was crying before she could stop it. She pulled her head back slightly so that, if the tears fell, John would not know it.

“I hate this,” she whispered. “I _hate_ it.”

Finally he shifted, leaning back into her embrace as his hand came up to cover hers where it rested on his stomach. Joan put her cheek against his neck again, uncaring if he felt the wetness there. His own silent tears edged his shaky breathing as it slowly evened out with sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all my fellow writers out there, let this chapter be a reminder to back up your work! I wrote this chapter on a google doc during a cross-country train without a wi-fi connection. When I arrived in Chicago, none it had saved. Luckily I had another cross-country train trip the next day so I could rewrite it. Back up your work, my friends, before you go to the next chapter.


	17. October 1918

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and commenting. For those of you following along in your history books, you might remember what happens in fall of 1918. I would never have thought when I was writing this that the chapter would be quite so relevant.

At first Joan could not identify the knocking that woke her. She sat up abruptly as the baby started crying. Beside her, John lit the lamp, the light as disorienting as the knocking. Joan found her watch on the nightstand and saw it was minutes past two.

John was already out of bed, pulling on his dressing gown. “Go to the children,” he said, “and stay in the nursery.”

As he hurried for the front door, Joan did as he asked, rocking baby John into silence. She still couldn’t hear what was happening downstairs though. There were two men besides John, but their words were lost to her. Then the door closed and John came crashing up the stairs.

“Joan?”

She stepped out into the hall with baby John clutched to her chest. “What’s happened?”

“Boys at the school are ill. It’s the influenza.” She followed him into their bedroom and watched as he pulled on trousers and a tweed coat, forgoing a tie. “I’ll be back by morning. Go back to sleep.”

At first she put John back to bed and paced, her stomach too unsettled by the news to do anything else. There had been a few people ill in the village already, but they had hoped the school would remain safe. Her pacing grew exhausting quickly, and she felt like her legs couldn’t hold her, so she sat on the bed.

“Mummy! Mummy!”

The walk to Margaret’s room made her lightheaded. She had to lean against the door jamb to stay upright. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“My tummy hurts.”

Joan stumbled to her daughter’s bed and took the little girl in her arms. “It’ll be alright. Just rest.”

“M’ hot, Mummy.”

“It is hot in here, isn’t it?” She pressed her lips against Margaret’s soft curls. “Don’t worry, Daddy will be home soon. It’ll be fine. It is hot, though.”

It seemed as though a few minutes passed, or perhaps it was hours. There was light now, so much light it made her head hurt.

“Oh god, Joan, please no.”

There were arms around her, like an embrace. When Joan managed to open her eyes in spite of the light, she found arms in a tweed coat holding her. They must be John’s arms. How nice. It was a little too warm though and she opened her mouth to say so, but forgot what the problem had been.

Another few minutes passed and Joan found herself lying in bed again. It wasn’t her bed. It was too small and the room was too big. She wasn’t holding Margaret anymore though. When she tried to call out, tell John to fetch Margaret, she wasn’t sure if she actually made any sound.

Joan imagined Martha of all people standing over her with a cool cloth. Dream or not, Martha was the last person she wanted to see, and she told the dream-Martha as much. Martha only nodded along and forced her to drink some broth.

Later she dreamed she was in one of John’s stories. She was standing inside of his blue box, surrounded by dials and lights and switches while John danced around with a sort of nervous energy that nearly overwhelmed her. He bounded over to her, and then back to pull a lever. “Where do you want to go?” he asked. “Name a place, a time! Anything. Come on, it’s time to go!”

“I don’t want to go,” Joan said.

“No, no, no, we have to!”

There was a light in the center of the blue box and it was growing brighter. Soon it was so bright Joan couldn’t bear to look at it. She shut her eyes tightly. When she opened them next, it was pitch black and the box was gone.

“Joan? Joan, can you open your eyes please? Please, darling, for me?”

That was John talking to her, only it wasn’t a dream now. Joan forced her eyes open. As the light in the room resolved itself into shapes, she found John sitting beside her. He smiled outright when she saw her looking at him.

“John?”

“Yes, my love, I’m here. How do you feel?”

Joan tried to sit, but the movement made her head spin.

“No, don’t move,” he said, catching her and settling her back among the pillows. “You’re going to be fine, but you’re still quite weak.”

“Margaret?” Joan asked as her thoughts suddenly became clear. She started up again. “She was ill.”

John caught her before she could sit up all the way. “She’s here, shush. Look.” He held her so she could see Margaret curled on a cot at the other side of the room. “Her fever broke just after yours.”

With a sigh of relief, Joan lay back and closed her eyes.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” John breathed.

Joan opened her eyes again to look at him.

There was relief in the lines of his face, yet his eyes were shadowed with dark circles and his hair was greasy and mussed from having his hands run through it so many times. He no longer wore his jacket but Joan recognized the waistcoat as the one that matched the tweed suit he had put on in the middle of the night to run to the school.

“How long has it been?” Joan asked.

“Three days.”

He was staring at her like she might disappear if he glanced away. Joan blinked her gritty eyes and looked around. They were in John’s rooms at the school, only it was even messier than usual. There were spare towels and sheets and discarded bowls of broth on the table.

“I was terrified you might not wake up,” John said. “You and Margaret. You were…” He let out a breath. “Martha and I have been here the whole time.”

“Martha’s here?”

“She arrived as soon as she heard the fever had started here. Presumably to make sure I didn’t die of it,” John said grimly. “She’s got a theory that I can’t get catch the influenza, though. Whatever created me is keeping me alive. I don’t know why the children could fall ill though-”

“The children?” Joan gasped. “John isn’t-”

“No, no. I only meant Margaret. John is well. Mrs. Andrews is caring for him at her house.”

“Are the others…?”

John nodded solemnly. “Some of the students. Two teachers. They brought some of the villagers up her too, once we’d been quarantined. We’re still waiting on a few people to see if...They brought Lucy in yesterday.”

“Oh, Lucy. Is she going to be alright?”

“No.” He swallowed. “Her skin was turning blue when they brought her. She died very quickly.” With a grimace, he looked away from her. “I’m sorry, you didn’t need to hear that.”

“I’m a nurse, John, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Joan?” He was still staring at her as his voice grew desperate. “You were very ill. Both you and Margaret.”

“I know.”

“Martha, when she came, she said she needed a key. I gave it to her. That one you keep in your jewelry box.”

Joan nodded, but her sluggish mind didn’t understand.

“She cured you. Gave you medicine. You and Margaret. They have something wherever she’s from. You were…” His voice broke. “I thought you were going to die.”

He was trying to tell her something, needing her to give him...something. She didn’t know what.

“There was only enough for the two of you. She couldn’t…” He sniffed. “We couldn’t save anyone else. Only you.”

“I would have done the same,” Joan said without hesitation, and pushed herself up to press her lips to his.

The kiss he returned was distraught, with his hand cupping her cheek and the other at her waist and his tongue curling against hers. Joan understood his need to be close to her, but her body ached and her mouth was dry. She pushed him away with a gentle hand on his chest. With an apologetic smile, he touched his forehead to hers instead.

“I am selfish,” he murmured, “but I cannot seem to care.”

“I have been selfish since the moment I met you.”


	18. December 1918

The festivities for Christmas seemed half-hearted this year. There were visitors again. Or rather, there was Martha, unsure what to do with herself now that the war was over and the influenza seemed to have passed, and Lucy’s baby daughter. There seemed little point in planning a dinner when the butcher rarely had meat with any reliability, even with rationing ended. And that was only when Joan managed to brave the devastating walk to town. Homes bore ribbons for soldiers and closed curtains for death and Joan did not see a house that did not speak of loss. It felt as if only her family had come through the past three years intact.

John took most of the holiday festivities upon himself. He had thrown himself into their home life since the students at the school were sent home early for their holidays. He spent most of his days playing with the children and reading to Margaret. He cleaned his study. He sat in the kitchen with Joan, watching her cook and shyly asking if she could teach him. When the time came, he had the grocer help him get a tree and collected Martha and Joan in the parlor to trim it.

They lived in tacit peace, accustoming themselves to newspapers that didn’t tell stories of war and conscription and sickness and walks that no longer contained all the familiar faces.

Martha did not speak about the Doctor. She had saved Joan’s life and, though no one said it aloud, they knew if the Doctor was to come back, the grief of losing Joan was the most likely thing to bring about the change. Privately, Joan thought Martha would not have dared it. Such a loss must enter the Doctor’s consciousness and, while she knew little about him, she thought she knew enough to say he could not forgive such a thing.

Lucy had not been at the house for months, not since her baby was born, but Joan had never missed her presence so keenly. Her daughter did not quite fit. Stella, her name was. Martha had brought her to the house after Lucy’s death. She was not as easy as Joan’s own children had been, restless and stubborn, even though John said he could sense her in a similar way. Martha cared for her at first while John tended to Joan and Margaret in their recoveries. After that, the little girl’s care shifted among them, never neglected but relegated to another task to be done.

They spoke at first of what might be done with her, who might take her or if she should go back to the convent where she had been born. The conversations faded without a decision over time, suddenly remembered and quickly forgotten as Christmas approached.

On the day before Christmas, Martha announced at dinner that she was leaving. “Probably after New Year’s.”

“Where to now?” Joan asked.

“Dunno. Time to move on though. There are people out there need saving.” With her fork laid against her plate, she glanced between the two of them. “Someone’s gotta do it. Might as well be me.”

John smiled at her. “You are brilliant at helping people.”

“I suppose,” said Joan, “that we should decide what to do about Stella then.” She had been busy cutting Margaret’s chicken into small pieces and did not realize at first that the other two were staring at her. The quiet made her look up.

“I thought…” Martha shrugged. “I thought you were going to adopt her.”

“I-” Joan looked helplessly at John. “I had never thought about it.”

“It seemed to make sense,” said Martha. “We’ve already been caring for her. I thought that had been your plan.” Realizing she had brought up a topic that would require either discussion or several minutes of awkward silence, Martha rose. “I’ll get started on the dishes.” She only collected her plate though since there others weren’t half-way finished, pulled baby John out of his highchair and onto her hip, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Joan turned towards John. They had never talked about this, not in any seriousness, and she realized she could not guess what his thoughts might be. Even now, his expression was passive, only a twitch of his jaw to hint at any feeling.

“Did you think we were...adopting her?” Joan asked. “We never…”

“I don’t know.” He leaned forward in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. “I think I would miss her if she were not with us anymore.”

“She’s not ours.”

“We could afford it without too much trouble,” he said, “although we should hire another maid. We really should have done that months ago.” He stopped babbling, realizing his thoughts had left Joan behind. “We did say we wanted to do something to help Lucy. Could this not be part of it?”

“But _this_ , John? Another child? It wouldn’t be fair to her if I couldn’t...if I didn’t…” She frowned at John, imploring him for an answer, but he only gazed back. “What if I could never think of her as _mine_? I’m afraid I would only ever see Lucy’s daughter.”

He nodded in acknowledgement rather than agreement.

Margaret, bored by their tense conversation, demanded, “Can we have a book now?”

“Hush, sweetheart,” said Joan gently.

John was moving food around on his plate, studying his dinner with far more focus than was necessary. Whenever he glanced at her, he seemed alarmed to find her still looking at him, as if they were waiting on his answer and not hers. With a sigh, he finally said, “If you can’t, it’s not a...a failing. There is not any need to feel guilty over it.”

“I know.” Her words sounded far more unsure than she meant them to.

“You are so protective of your family.” The fork John clutched in his hand moved across his plate again, the movement absent as he thought on his words. “I have always admired that about you. You are...intensely loyal to those you can claim as yours and I have always considered myself indescribably fortunate to be one of those people. Lucy was one, I think, and I just know how lucky her daughter would be to have both your protection and love.” He raised his head. “But I also think, for you, love sometimes grows slowly. I’ve always wondered if that’s why it is so strong for you.”

Joan clasped her hands reflexively on the table top and looked away from him. A deep breath did nothing for her, the exhale shaky as she clenched her hands tighter together, her wedding ring cutting into her skin.

“It will have to be your decision,” John said, rising. “I will agree with whatever you choose, but choose what is best for you.” He walked around the table, brushing his fingertips over Joan’s shoulder as he passed, and collected Margaret from her chair, asking what book she wanted to read as they left the room.

The rest of the evening happened around Joan in her seat at the dining room table. Martha eventually came to collect the dishes and take them to the kitchen. Baby John and Margaret started fighting, which led to shouting, which woke Stella. John brought Stella downstairs to cradle against his chest as they all sat around the room, cast in the flickering glow of the candles on the Christmas tree. Baby John fell asleep on the rug and Margaret kept interrupting John and Martha’s conversation to show them a page out of her book.

Joan could see them all there from her spot at the table.

This Christmas wasn’t festive, or even particularly happy. Instead everyone was tired and empty.

John had never been called to the front, but he had seen his students go in his place, go and not come back, and he looked older. Not young and boyish and bounding. Martha was still a lifetime from home, resiliently carving out life here instead, waiting on someone who might never come. Stella, with a mother so carelessly taken, and not yet old enough to know it. Joan’s own two lovely children, unaware any of it had taken place, that there were people missing and people who did not quite belong.

Joan smiled. The holiday wasn't festive or happy, but there was peace and comfort and family and it would be enough for now.


	19. November 1923

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a little out of hand. Every time I read it over to cut words, I ended up adding more. It's also nsfw.

Joan flinched in alarm at the shout that rang out, but it was only Margaret and John, trailed by Stella, racing toward her along the lane outside the house. Their steps kicked up the last dull autumn leaves. As they came close, Joan braced herself for the impact and was not disappointed as Stella ran past the other two and collided with her legs.

“Mum!” shouted John, “You have to come see the fort we built. It’s _enormous_.”

“It’s going to be a time machine,” Margaret said. “Like in Dad’s stories.”

“I can’t wait to see it, but help me get the groceries home first. Here, you two hold this.” She passed a handle of the basket to each John and Margaret and they set off with it, excited to get things home and return to their play. With her hands now free, Joan clasped Stella’s mittened hand, relishing the warmth. The November day had been chillier than she expected when she set out for her errands. On days like these, she missed the layers and high necked dresses she wore back when she met John. “What about you? Are you helping with the time machine?”

“Yes, I’m making art, ‘cept Peggy and John say they won’t hang it.”

“Won’t hang your art?” Joan gasped. “We shall have to talk some sense into them.”

The children had left the front door wide open and Joan could hear them arranging groceries in the kitchen, the maid chastising them for putting things in the wrong places. Joan shut the door and busied herself with taking off her hat and scarf. “Where’s you father, Stella?”

Stella only shrugged, already returning to her spot at the table with her crayons.

Down the hall by the door to John’s study, the children’s talking was a muffled echo, not loud enough to hide the rustling that followed Joan’s knock on the door before John called out, “Come in.”

Inside sported the usual mess, papers strewn about and books stacked haphazardly when he had perfectly good shelves along the walls. Strangely, John was sitting with nothing open before him, as if he had been occupying himself with studying the empty tree branches outside the window and nothing more. Or the rustling had been him hiding whatever he didn’t want her to see. She dragged her smile onto her face.

“Have you been hiding in here all morning?” she asked. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded falsely high.

“Not hiding. Just...sitting.”

“It sounds like John and Margaret have had quite the productive morning. They’ve built...well, I’m not entirely sure. They’ve built something out in the garden. Would you like to come and see it with me?”

“Ah, no.” He flashed her an apologetic smile. “I have work I need to finish.”

She couldn’t smile back. Even the little smile she’d fixed in place before was gone. Contrary to what Joan might have guessed years ago, it never got easier to keep the hurt at bay when he was like this. It wasn’t often. Maybe every few months he would see something while they were out or wake from a dream on a gasp and, without explaining what caused it, would be distant for a few days. He would wander about with his gaze focused on some faraway thought, hardly noticing where he was or what he was doing or who he was with.

The children never seemed to mind these periods much. Probably whatever strange, alien thoughts they all shared led to unspoken understanding. Even Stella did not mention anything amiss. They went about their lives as usual, tackling their father and climbing on him like monkeys at whatever moment they sensed he was through with his mood.

Joan did not have that luxury. She had only as much of his thoughts as showed on his face and were spoken aloud. When he was distant, she had nothing.

Joan was not naive or dramatic or lovestruck, and she knew there were moments in a marriage where one or the other spouse was distant. A couple of times she had been the distracted one, irritated with John or simply pursuing her own thoughts. But her thoughts were small. John had several lifetimes worth of stories, whether they belonged to him or not, of adventures and heroics and loves. When his thoughts carried him off, he went further than she could even imagine.

Usually it did not bother her. Or she did not let it, at any rate. She spent a few days focusing on the children before John’s attention came back to her with a shy apology and gentle kisses.

Only this time it had been weeks and Joan was lonely.

“Well,” she huffed noisily, “finish your work then. I’ll call you for tea.”

“Joan?”

She paused with her hand on the door to glance over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised in silent question.

“I would like to spend tonight at the school.”

“It’s Saturday,” Joan said, as if that was the most unreasonable part of her husband wanting to spend a night in a bachelor’s rooms.

That was not the answer he expected. His forehead creased in confusion and he examined his desktop as if that would make Joan’s words clear. “Yes. It will be quieter. Some of the students will be home for the weekend. The children will be here.” He threw the statements out as if they were guesses.

“I see.” Joan made to leave.

“Wait, Joan!”

She turned back again, this time to find him standing behind his desk, looking unsure whether he should go over it, beneath it, or around it to stop her from leaving, and instead settling for standing frozen, his arm outstretched and a self-deprecating smile on his face. “I am afraid I haven’t made myself clear. I’m sorry, my thoughts have been elsewhere. Please, let me start again?” He gestured to the seat across from him. Joan didn’t take it, not wanting to be sitting across from him again, but she did move nearer. Twisting his hands together, John perched himself on the side of his desk and said, “It has been ten years.”

“Nearly.” Joan couldn’t help her smile at the reminder. Already she was planning for their wedding anniversary, though she hadn’t decided on anything definite. A party seemed a necessity, according to their friends and John’s coworkers. “Ten years in May.”

“Yes, right.” John bowed his head for a second before attempting to meet her eye. “But it’s ten years today from…” He dropped his head again, but not before Joan saw his blush. “...from when we went to the dance and I drew your portrait and…”

“And you kissed me,” Joan teased. There was no hiding his blush now as the top of his ears went pink. It was amusing to see him discomfited by those things, especially after all these years, especially when he could be so _not discomfited_ in the quiet of their bedroom.

“I know it’s not incredibly romantic. It’s no holiday, and if you don’t want to, we-we certainly don’t have to, but I wondered if you might join me at the school. I’ve already talked with the maid, to ask her to watch the children for the night. It would just be us...just like…”

“Like old times?”

“If you don’t want to-”

“I want to. I’ll pack.” She went for the door again, and once more stopped before she could get there, coming back to John for a kiss. He grinned through it, that self-satisfied grin she felt like he hadn’t worn in weeks.

\- - -

They walked to the school with her arm in the crook of his as if they were courting again save for the small carpetbag John carried. He opened gates and doors for her with exaggerated chivalry that made Joan giggle as if ten years had not passed her by. John unlocked the door to his rooms, and stepped back to let her through.

“Oh,” Joan exclaimed, “you’ve cleaned.” Once he had the door locked again from the inside, she wrapped her arms around his chest and kissed the underside of his jaw. “It’s spotless. You couldn’t have gotten me a better present. I didn’t get you anything.”

“Jokes, darling? This is a serious moment.” In one motion, he stooped down, wrapped his arms around her thighs, and threw her over his shoulder so he could carry her across the room. At first she thought he might toss her onto the bed, or the couch, or even — and she would blame her red face on the blood rushing to her head from being upside down — the desk. Instead he shifted them so he could sit in his desk chair and she was in his lap, her head resting on his shoulder, his hands clasped at her hip to hold her close. Suddenly, in the quiet, the moment felt as serious as he said.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pressed his cheek into her hair.

“For what?” She kept her voice low too without knowing why. There was no one around, the corridor outside was empty.

“For...for being me.”

“ _What?_ ” It was clumsy to try to sit up in his lap. John tightened his grip on her to keep her from sliding off.

When she was stable again, she found him watching her, his eyes sad. He shook his head, the impatience of the gesture at odds with his expression. “You know what I mean. I’m not blind, I know it...hurts you when I’m...like I am. Like I have been these last few weeks. It hurts you and yet I…” He made a sort of gesture with his hand that meant little but left Joan’s skin cold in the moment his hand was off her.

At first, as his hand planted itself against her hip again, the words that welled up in her mouth were denials and reassurances, but they faded as quickly as they came. When she spoke, the only thing she could say was a quiet, “Yes.”

"I don't know why I can't stop it, why I must always be so distracted." He bit out the last word. "I want to be here, present, with you. That's all I've ever wanted, so why can't…" The idea fell away before he finished it and he breathed deeply, his chest rising and falling beneath her.

Beneath her fingertips, John's lapel was coarse. She wished he'd taken off his jacket before they'd sat, but she wasn't going to move to let him do so now. Her fingers skated over the fold of his lapel onto the waistcoat beneath and over until she could feel his heartbeat under her palm. "Where do your thoughts take you," she asked, "during these times?" She had never asked the question before, never felt brave enough to know. Ten years had passed though, ten years of wondering and not knowing, and here he was after all of it, trying to recreate their first days together while apologizing for being himself. Even before she had brought up the village dance, she knew there would be days where his mind would be far away from her, up in the clouds, in the stars.

The thought occurred now that, maybe through the next ten years, he might not be alone in these thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Joan,” he said again. “I have been...a poor husband, even when I was trying not to be. The fact of it is, I do have a gift for you. Do you remember the journal I gave you in the beginning?”

“Of course, I still have it.”

“I’ve made you another one.”

He shifted, rearranging their limbs and bodies until he could reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a notebook. It was smaller than the his last one, a wine red this time, looking just as worn. For a long moment, Joan stared at where he held it between them.

“ _Here._ ” He thrust it towards her when she did not move, pressing it against her stomach.

Joan took it on reflex, but only cradled it to her chest, her fingers running over the edges of the pages without opening it.

“Those are my thoughts,” said John. “Every dream. I’ve written them and...drawn them…” Impatient, he reached forward and opened the journal for her, leaving it open to a page filled with his scribbled text. “We avoided these stories after...well, after. But there’s more than just those. I’ve put them in there, and you don’t have to look through it now, but when you want...And it’s not...I know it’s no substitute for...for me just being better. I’m going to try that too, and really you should slap me upside the head next time I’m like I am-”

His words drowned out as he went on talking, the thrumming in Joan’s ears louder than anything he said as she let the notebook pages slip beneath her thumb. There was a sketch of his blue box again, then a strange sort of man with tentacles where his mouth should be, then a page of text. Then Margaret when she was a few months old. A rhinoceros that walked on two legs. More text. Baby John and Stella. Students crowded in the corridor at school. A muddy trench boarded by barbed wire. Joan in the kitchen, standing at the counter. Another of her face that took a moment to understand because it was a point of view she had never seen herself from, her beneath him, her mouth open as she came.

“Everything is all jumbled,” he was saying. “His memories and mine, and usually I can keep them straight, but sometimes it’s too much. They’re all there. Writing them down helps me sort them out, and...they’re yours. They’re yours now.” He lapsed into silence of his own accord and in the echoing stillness, Joan let the journal close, her thumb between the last pages she looked at it. She raised her gaze. “Don’t cry, Joan, my love, that’s not what I meant to happen.” With his thumb, he swiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Did you ever…” She hugged the book to her chest. This was John, not only the man sitting before her, but the man inside the journal pages. All of it was him, and all of him was hers. “Did you ever regret not going with Martha? H-had it been an option?”

“No, never.”

“Never?”

“Why do you sound disbelieving? Do you regret that I didn’t?” His tone was light and he tried for a small laugh at the end of it. The sound was flat.

“I mean, when we’re fighting, or when a student has sent you to the end of your wits? You’ve never had a moment where you’ve thought, ‘I wouldn’t have to deal with this if I was not John Smith’?”

This time his surprised laugh was genuine and warm. “Yes, of course I’ve thought that sometimes,” he said when he collected himself, eyes still shining. “Haven’t you? ‘If this damn John Smith hadn’t crash landed here, I’d never have to deal with his moods or these unruly children or whatever other madness you suffer on a daily basis.’ I think it sometimes, and I am so thankful I do. My worries in life are that my children won’t be quiet for two minutes together and my wife doesn’t stop nagging me to clean my office. I don’t think the Doctor could have ever had this, no matter how much he might have wanted it. It’s mine. All of it, so real and mine. Now you’re crying again. This is supposed to be a happy occasion.”

“I’m sorry.”

He pulled her into his chest with a click of his tongue. “You mustn’t be sorry, only how will you eat without your food getting damp? Come.” As he returned her to her feet and took her hand, taking the journal from her to leave on his desk, Joan sniffled away the rest of her tears. She didn’t let him pull her into the other room though. At her hesitation, he said, “Darling?”

“Perhaps dinner could come second?” The wateriness in her voice likely made the question less alluring than she would have hoped and yet John’s face split into a gleeful grin all the same. He would tease her now, she was sure. Her face seemed to be already turning warm in preparation.

When he spoke, however, he sounded so fond that Joan felt the heat leave her cheeks and pool in her stomach instead. “My bold wife.” This time he picked her up properly, an arm around her back and another beneath her knees, and bore her to the bed where he set her tenderly down. “We can forego all sustenance until tomorrow, if it pleases you,” he said gallantly and bent to remove her shoes and stockings.

“You were never this insufferable ten years ago.”

“You were never so bold. I had to compensate.” He guided her to sit so he could reach the buttons on the back of her dress and pull it over her head. “Nor were your clothes so easy to remove then. Now I can have you undressed with hardly more than a look.”

“ _John!_ ”

He muffled his laughter at her shoulder, his kisses on her collarbone filled with smiles. When she pushed him back with a hand at his chest, he complied, but did not lift a finger to help her undo his tie and the buttons on his waistcoat and cuffs and shirt. Whenever she glanced up at him, he only widened his lascivious grin, especially at her muttering when she reached the buttons on his combinations.

“Shame my clothes haven’t gotten any easier,” he said cheerfully. “If I had known you were going to ravish me _before_ dinner, I would have removed a few layers before we left the house.” He shrugged his shoulders obligingly so she could slip his braces from them.

“I won’t ravish you at all if you don’t help me get your trousers off.”

The threat didn’t shift his smile, but he did rise and remove the rest of his clothing until he stood, completely naked, beside the bed. Only then did he grow serious. His fingertips stretched out to brush the escaping hair behind her ear and he bent forward so he could capture her lips with his. The kiss was deep and unhurried, despite him already being half hard. He took his time winding his tongue about hers, his breathing loud through his nose, his hands fixed behind her head and between her shoulder blades as if there was nowhere else for them to be, as if this kiss was the most intimate thing they would share this night. Joan whimpered.

“Please,” he murmured, the words warm against her mouth, “take off the rest of your clothes. I want to be near you.”

Joan did as he asked, unhurried, letting the moment draw out, become taut while he was fixated on her, letting his eyes wander only as far from her face as the tips of her fingers and her feet where they rested on the cold wood floor. No longer could she be self conscious in front of him, but the look made her skin seem to spark all the same. She found her way back into the bed by touch alone, not daring to turn from his gaze, and offered him her arms.

The bed was small, meant for one person, but it did not hinder them. His knees landed between her legs with ease, his practiced hands framing her head on the pillow, his cock pressed between their bodies. He was kissing her again. For all his talk of ravishing each other, he moved with tenacious patience. There was no teasing in it, just simple comfort. A feeling that, though there was no rush, they would never have this moment again.

When Joan felt the wetness on her cheek, she touched her hand to his shoulder and he pushed himself away from her only enough that she could see his face. He did not attempt to hide his eyes or the tears that fell from them and she in turn said nothing. She expected her own tears, the love in her chest so much as to be painful, the want building in her nearly unbearable, and the words to express any of it unknown to her. She reached her hand between them to take him, his length full in her hand, and ran the head of him through her folds. His ragged moan ghosted warm against her forehead as her wetness coated him.

She guided him to her entrance and removed her hand to press against his back, encouraging him to resume his place laying against her. It had been careless to move so quickly. The kissing, no matter how searing, had not entirely prepared her body and there was a slight pain. Joan embraced it, let it be quelled by the need to have him closer, surrounding her.

He knew though, and he went slowly, entering her bit by bit with even more patience than he had for the kiss, until he was completely inside her and they were still. The pain twinged and subsided, replaced by the heat of him and the safeness of his full weight on her from their chests to the point where they were joined. His thumb came up to her cheek and she knew she was crying without knowing she had begun. Beneath his palm, she nodded and he began to move. Unhurried, at first, trying to keep to the rhythm they had started when his lips first met hers. She moaned, the noise cut off halfway through, not out of any worry they would be heard but simply to preserve the quietness of the moment where only the rustle of the quilt beneath them and the dull thud of his skin against hers echoed in the room.

It didn’t matter. The stillness broke all the same. There had been too much teasing, too much weight on words and touches, too much of each other, and still not enough. They had stretched the moment, seeking the end while wanting to delay it, to savor the waiting, and now it could not last.

John’s thrusts grew faster and erratic and, desperately, Joan wrapped her arms and legs about him, so tightly he could no longer move. He didn’t try to. He stayed caught in her embrace and she came with a sob that was only slightly louder than her breaths. John followed with a gasp that might have been her name, his intense gaze finally leaving her as his eyes closed, his hips jerked, and he came.

Afterwards he laid over her, enough weight on his forearms that he didn’t crush her while the rest of him was boneless and warm against her, his face buried in the crook of her neck. He murmured she should push him off it she grew uncomfortable, but nothing else disturbed the stillness of their breathing.

They must have both fallen asleep there as next Joan knew, she was waking in the dark, John twitching above her in a dream and his fingers absently moving over her ribs. It didn’t seem an unpleasant dream. When she shifted enough to see his face in the moonlight, he was peaceful. She moved them both only enough to situate his weight at her side and reach for the blanket at the end of the bed with her foot now that the air and their bodies had grown cool. Thus settled, she brushed John’s messy hair from his forehead and laid a kiss on the skin beneath. He did not wake for any of it while she felt herself moving back towards sleep as well. At this rate, tea and dinner past, John might have been right that they would forgo all sustenance until tomorrow. Or they might wake in a few hours for a picnic on John’s floor, or wake to make love again. Joan curled onto her side, as close to John as she could be, and let herself drift off.


	20. September 1924

They started, without any conscious decision, walking in the village park on Sundays after mass. Partially it had to do with the children being old enough to wander and play without so much supervision, and, after sitting still in church for so long, a need to burn away their energy if there was to be any hope for a quiet afternoon. But then it became a time for talking and watching the seasons change and knowing their family was happy and safe and they did not skip the walk even if it rained.

Today was a beautiful day, brisk among the autumn colors. The children were in coats and mittens though it was not cold enough to keep them from running about. As Joan and John strolled hand in hand, their son led Margaret and Stella on some imaginary adventure through the park, some game that carried the children away down the path and into the trees before bringing them back like an elastic band, seconds before Joan might have called after them.

“Is it too much to expect boys to behave until at least the second month of the term?” John was asking. “I know that they all sit in their rooms playing poker and drinking whatever they’ve stolen from Baxter, but this year it’s particularly bad. What is happening with children these days?”

“Oh, dearest, you say that every year.”

“Yes, and every year I mean it tenfold.”

“Margaret, John, do not climb that tree!”

“Really, what is the world coming to? I know they are only testing me. But so early in term, I ask you?”

“Mummy! Daddy!” Stella ran back to them and situated herself between her parents, pulling their hands apart so they could hold both of her hands instead. She told them a story as she walked, but not one they could follow even if they wanted to pay attention. John caught Joan’s eye over their daughter’s head and smiled. As one, they raised their arms, lifting Stella off the ground and swinging her forward. Her story ended abruptly with a gleeful shriek. “Again!” she cried as soon as her feet were back on the ground. They obliged her for another few minutes until Joan’s arm grew tired and they let her run off to chase Margaret and John again.

In the newly empty space between them, John linked his arm with Joan’s and they continued on, laughing to each other, and not realizing the children were far enough ahead to be out of sight until they reached the edge of the park.

“Margaret!” Joan called, looking behind them for any sign of the children. “Stella! John! Where have they gone?”

“They’re probably rolling down the hill,” John said.

“They’re _what_?”

John motioned onward with his head and took her past the park gates to the ridge that led back to towards the school and their house. There was a steep hill there, leading down to a field abandoned since before the park had been planted, before even the war. As John said, the children were occupied in lying parallel to the road with their arms at their sides and rolling down the hill through leaves and soft grass. When they reached the bottom, they ran back to the top to go again.

“But they’re wearing their Sunday clothes!” Joan cried. “What if they hit their heads?”

“Hush, darling. They’ll be fine.”

“When did they learn to do this?”

In response, John was silent and when Joan turned her stoney glare on him, he rubbed at the back of his neck.

“John?”

“You were in town a few weeks ago and they were off school. I used to do this when I was a boy. It’s harmless.”

“You did no such thing as a boy. Don’t try that.”

He laughed once before he managed to sober at her expression. Apparently abashed, he turned and shouted, “That’s enough, Margaret, John, Stella! Let’s go back to the house.” He walked on again as the children finished their lap and climbed back up the hill. “Are you truly angry?”

“I’ll likely forgive you in a few days, after you wash their clothes.”

“For you, I can do that.”

“And clean your study.”

“Ah, now see here, woman, you go too far-”

“Mummy, look what I found!”

Again Stella was slipping in between them, her mittened hands clasped tightly before her as if to keep an animal from escaping. John’s and Margaret’s playful shouts rang out behind them. Joan steeled herself for a frog or large insect or a field mouse as Stella’s hand came away.

It was none of those things. It wasn’t even living.

Stella held a fob watch.

An unremarkable, scratched, and tarnished silver watch, though not as tarnished as a watch should be after sitting abandoned in a field for more than ten years.

“Can you hear it?” Stella asked. “It’s talking.”

Joan snatched the thing before anyone could speak and slipped it into her coat pocket.

“But Mummy, that’s mine. I found it.”

“Quiet,” Joan snapped. Then, softer, “Not right now, Stella. Can you go home and start setting the table, please? Now?” Stella stood there with her arms crossed as long as she dared. When her mother did not yield, she glanced to her father and then gave up. She stomped her foot in the gravel before running in the direction of the house.

“Joan?”

“Not now, John.”

She didn’t take his hand again for the rest of the walk to the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know about you, but things were getting just a bit too happy for me there.


	21. September 1924

The luncheon was a tense affair. Joan and John did not speak, hardly looked up from their plates. Every time Joan did, she found the children glancing curiously among themselves. As soon as her plate was empty, she rose and collected the dishes, carrying them through to the kitchen before anyone could say anything.

She scrubbed with far more force than necessary and banged the dishes about with little regard for the condition of their dinnerware. It all made so much noise she didn’t hear the door as John let himself in. When she turned around to find him standing by the work table, looking out of place, she gave a short scream and threw a hand across her heart.

“Lord, John! Don’t just barge in.”

“We need to talk.”

“Not now we don’t.” Turning her back on him, she resumed her washing, trying to clang the dishes loud enough to drown him out.

“When, then? When would you like to talk about this?”

“ _Not now!_ ”

“Can I have the watch?”

“No.”

“Are we going to pretend it never happened then? That we don’t have the watch?”

Joan stilled. The water on her hands that had been warm a moment ago began to dry, chilling her and she shivered, the feeling of it racing up her spine. Her eyes fell closed and she released her breath. When she was certain there would be no tears, she looked into the soapy water and asked, “Does having the watch change anything?”

There was no response. He stood so quietly she might have expected he had left the room if she couldn’t _feel_ his anxious presence still by the table. Joan turned to him.

“Well? What difference does it make?”

His mouth hung open as if he willed words to fill it, but none did.

“If you didn’t know Stella had found it and I simply hid it with my stockings for the rest of my life, would you have wondered about it?”

“It’s not yours.”

“From what I’ve heard, it isn’t yours either,” Joan cried, her voice going high near the end. “You were never concerned about the watch before, but what? Now that it’s a possibility to...to…” A shudder wracked her body.

“You don’t trust me.”

“Because you’re asking me to let you leave.”

“No, I’m not. I’m _not_. I just...I need…” His jaw was opening and closing while he grasped for the words, his hand reaching out for her.

“You what?” Joan shouted. “You need what?”

“I can hear it.”

He watched her for a moment, searching her face for something she did not know to give. When he did not find it, he collapsed in on himself, his shoulders hunching, his arms loose at his sides, and his face crumpling. His gaze centered on the seam of her skirt where they both knew the watch rested in her pocket.

“I can hear it,” he whispered.

“What is it saying?” Joan asked coldly.

Instead of answering, John ran his hands through his hair with what looked like enough violence to pull several strands free. His breathing stuttered and his gaze moved frantically about the kitchen, never settling. Then, without warning, he spun on his heel and left the room. Joan heard the front door slam before she truly realized he was gone.

She did not follow. She needed the moment alone to think, to understand, to plant her palms on the edge of the sink and let her sobs cause her to bend double, her forehead nearly against the porcelain.

It had been such a happy day in a happy year in what she now realized was a stolen decade.

“Mum?”

At Margaret’s voice, Joan straightened. Clenching her teeth helped to suppress her sobs and she dried her tears with the corner of her apron. Still, she did not dare turn around. “Yes, dear?”

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Where did Dad go? Why were you fighting?”

“We weren’t fighting. He remembered something he’d forgotten. Why don’t you go play out in the garden? Take the other two with you.”

“Is this about the thing Stella found on the hill? The watch thing that talks?”

Joan’s grip on the sink made her knuckles turn white. “Yes, dear. And if you go play out in the garden like I asked, we’ll tell you about it after dinner. Run along.”

Only John didn’t come back for dinner. They waited for half an hour until Joan called the school to give him a piece of her mind for being late, but no one at the school had seen him. So they ate dinner with his place empty, and Joan put the children to bed on her own, Margaret having mercifully given up her questions in the face of the prevailing mood. Joan knew there was no chance of getting any sleep herself though. Not when the watch still weighed in her pocket and John was out somewhere.

She did not want to worry about him. She wanted to be angry with him for so immediately asking about the watch, for thinking about the possibilities. There were no possibilities. There was her and their children and their life.

In his study, she poured his whiskey into a glass and sat herself in his chair. She did not want to worry.

The memory of his expression was there though, every time she blinked. His distress when he looked to her for an answer and found none tore at her heart. She drank the whiskey to burn it away, but the alcohol only made her cough. The watch glinted dully when she took it from her pocket and placed on the desk.

If they hadn’t spoken of it with such wonder in their voices, John and Margaret and Stella, Joan didn’t know if she would have believed there was anything special about it. It was scratched and needed a polish and was utterly unremarkable. No wonder ten years had passed without anyone finding it.

She only wished ten more years could pass. Or twenty. Or her lifetime.

There was a creak of hinges as the front door opened. By sound alone, Joan could follow John’s progress through the house, his movements as familiar to her as her own. He hesitated in the doorway, would have glanced into the parlor, and headed for the stairs. He would have seen the light on in his study and she pictured the second of indecision crossing his face before his careful steps headed for her. The study door opened.

He looked terrible. His hair was more disheveled than she’d ever seen it, and damp, as if he’d gotten caught in a rain shower. From his spot in the doorway, he waited, gaping at her and apparently unsure if he was welcome in his own study, before he caught sight of the watch laying innocently on the desktop. The sight sent him stumbling forward into the chair she usually occupied and he sat, hands clenched between his knees, and raised his eyes not to the watch, but to Joan. She could tell this time, clearly, what he sought from her in the emotions that flickered over his face - answers, direction, reassurance, understanding.

Still she could not give them. Her arms felt like lead, too heavy to reach for him, and words felt like dust, making it impossible to utter any save for a quiet, “You missed dinner.”

It was unsurprising he didn’t respond to that.

“Why does this have to change anything?” Joan asked. “Can’t we pretend we never found it?”

“But we did.” He sounded like her as he said it, resigned given there was no hope of changing it, and practical. How fitting of him to do that now when she needed a story, some tale they could tell about the mysterious watch as if it was an heirloom on the mantlepiece and not...whatever it was.

She dug her fingernails into her palms and focused her energy on making her voice level. “All this time...Was it all because you thought there was no other option?”

His mouth snapped shut with near comical abruptness given the seriousness of the moment and his forehead creased. Whatever he felt about the watch was, for the moment, forgotten as he regarded Joan with bemusement. “Everything has been real. I have never lied about what I felt or what I wanted. How can you say it wasn’t?”

“Because you want to throw it all away like it was nothing!”

Instantly, his confusion faded and the expression that replaced it was more reassuring than anything he had said since that morning. Still serious, but confident of himself and his desires, the expression she attributed to him being _certain_ of things and which she rarely saw. He accompanied it with a smile.

“Joan, I do not want to change back.”

“You don’t?”

His response was not words, but rather wide, disbelieving eyes and a sort of offended huff of breath.

“Then why did you need to see the watch?”

“Curiosity. There’s an entire life in there if we believe Martha and I can hear it...like it’s whispering in my head. Don’t you hear it?”

Joan shook her head, but murmured, “Margaret and Stella can though.”

“Did you really think…” He exhaled noisily, the crease in his brow returning. “What _did_ you think? As soon as I saw it, I would open it and...and…” His hand made a wide gesture. “That means I die, and leave you, leave everything. I don’t think I could do that to myself, god forbid I do it to you.”

There was rebuke in his tone and Joan said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t...It surprised me so when I saw it. I didn’t know what to do. And then you started acting strangely…”

“Because you reacted as you did. I saw everything we worried about in the past...All those doubts and wondering if I was...more than a story. If I would...have to change now. We had dealt with everything and here are all those doubts came back.”

“They did.”

“Yes, for me too.”

They fell silent, letting both their gazes drop to the watch.

“It does change things, doesn’t it?” Joan asked eventually.

“Not everything, but we can’t pretend we didn’t find it. There are other people’s lives involved.”

“Martha’s?”

“And his.” John nodded his head at the watch.

“No. He gave his up. He had a choice and he chose to run. That is not your responsibility.”

“Joan, please hear me,” he said patiently, putting his hand on the desk to request hers. Instead of giving it to him, she raised her eyebrows in expectation and he continued, “I do not intend to change back, but that is something to be considered in all of this.” There was a moment of hesitation where his mouth moved without speaking. “Whatever decision we make, we must know that is the reality of it.”

She fiddled with her skirt while the words and her thoughts settled without revealing any clear argument. After another sigh, she smoothed out her dress and finally laid her hand in John’s on the tabletop. “Why must you be the reasonable one? Your head is supposed to be in the clouds.”

His other hand came over to cover hers so he could bring her knuckles to his lips. “Too much time with you, my dear,” he breathed.

In the silence, Joan realized she was exhausted. It had been a distant feeling through the day, diminished by fear and anger, but those dulled into distant worry and the exhaustion swept in to take their place. There was every chance sleep would not fix it though, not to mention the thought of climbing the stairs to their bedroom was overwhelming in itself. Neither of them moved from their chairs.

“What does it say to you?” Joan asked when to stay silent any longer would have caused her to doze off sitting up. She motioned slightly with their joined hands so he would know what she meant.

“Nothing I can make out. It’s like hearing people talking in the next room over or like I’m covering my ears.”

Joan pulled her hand from his and picked up the watch instead. She didn’t miss John’s small gasp as she did or the way his eyes were now glued to the little silver disk.

“Silly thing. I almost think you are all daft. It says nothing to me.”

Again John reached for her hand, trapping the watch between both of their palms. This time, they both gasped, loudly, and the inside of the study disappeared.

Joan was standing in a doorway and looking at a star. There was no reason she should know it was a star, not from this close. Yet in the manner of dreams, she accepted she was watching a star at the end of its life. John stood beside her. But it wasn’t John, was it? The clothes, of course, were strange, a heavy coat that flapped about his ankles and shielded him away, and the hair mussed in a different way. His expression, though, made her certain she was looking at the Doctor. He was appraising, almost as if he was bored watching a star explode at the edges of the universe. And he was sad. It wasn’t the same sadness as John. It was cold and contained and so, so old.

When he turned to face her, he did not see her.

They were in a city next, though not one like Joan had ever seen outside of an illustration in a book. It was all steel and glass and buildings so tall she could not see the tops of them. Martha was there. And they were running. Joan didn’t know from what or to what but she chased after the Doctor. He slowed only ever long enough to tell bystanders to run as well.

They were in a war. The war John had once drawn into his journal, not one of trenches and wire but of decimation all the same.

They were standing in ankle deep snow and Joan suddenly knew what her husband and children meant when they heard things she couldn’t. She recognized the creatures from John’s sketches even if she didn’t remember what he had named them. If this was not a dream, they would have frightened her with a sort of tentacles where a human mouth would be and their a small lit globe in their hands. They sang and it was beautiful.

They were on a street, like one Joan and John might have walked to town on. Damp and tree-lined and Earth-like. The Doctor ran the length of it, running towards a young blonde woman who Joan had once teased John about.

They were in his blue box. The inside of it was different than Joan had imagined and she did not have the presence of mind to study it now. The Doctor stood opposite her, beside his console of levers and buttons, looking into some middle distance. Joan didn’t exist to him, not here, and there was no one else. He endured whatever emotions flitted over his face -- Joan couldn’t tell what they were, his expressions were different than John’s -- alone.

His eyes focused. If Joan had existed there, he would have been looking straight at her. Instead he said into the emptiness, “I don’t want to go,” and it sounded like John, timid and sad and afraid.

They were in their study. The chair was hard beneath Joan, the edge of the desk was digging into her forearm, and John was looking at her. Not through her this time, but at her, with his eyes impossibly wide.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“Is that what your dreams are like?”

He nodded.

Joan gave a small smile without feeling any amusement. It was more for him than her, although it didn’t seem to help him either. “Such adventures,” she said. She meant to laugh, but the sound came out more like a sob.

Again he nodded, smaller this time, a tiny shake of his head. His chest expanded with a unsteady breath, that gusted out a moment later with a noise similar to Joan’s sob.

“He’s so lonely,” Joan said. “Even with other people.”

Straightening in his chair, John raised his arms towards her, beseeching her with words he was unable to give. She went without hesitation, skirting around the desk and climbing into his lap as his arms came around her. There were no more words. He only held her, never crying, but gasping with the effort of not doing so. When Joan chanced a glance at his face, she found him with staring with dry eyes at the watch. Almost glaring at it. She buried her head at his neck again, not wanting to see that look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are so close to the end of this story. I can't believe it! Thank you everyone for reading and leaving kudos. I've especially loved reading over all your comments.
> 
> Also, can I just share with you how hard it is to read and edit text where the characters' names are Joan and John? They're nearly the same name. I'm sure you all have dealt with it for the last twenty chapters, but my mind is playing tricks on me. I can hardly keep track of these two idiots.


	22. November 1924

They kept the watch in the drawer of Joan’s vanity. It seemed strange to keep such a thing in so mundane a location mixed in with Joan’s jewelry and cosmetics, though pushed slightly toward the back so she didn’t have to see it if she only opened the drawer slightly.

If John ever took it out to examine it, he did it when she was not home and she did not ask. She never removed it.

She tried to pretend it was not there. They both did. But they were not good at pretending.

Offhand comments about his past, or lack of one, and his alternative alien identity had become commonplace over the years. The suspicion and fear that met these comments in the beginning years had faded until they could snicker over whatever mischief he made up for his imaginary childhood and dream about increasingly unbelievable planets he might have traveled to.

That was over now.

Even their usual conversations, about his school and their children and the news and the gossip in the village, were stiff. They still had them over breakfast and tea, but it sometimes felt like they were playacting for the benefit of Margaret, John, and Stella. When they climbed into bed at night, they hardly spoke at all. Neither of them in particular was responsible. They both tried, they both failed.

“Are your parents coming for Christmas this year?” John asked one night in bed in the first days of November.

“No.”

“Quiet Christmas then.”

“Yes.”

“Goodnight.”

“‘Night.”

Over breakfast, Joan said, “The children will need new coats this year. I was thinking of taking them into the village after school.”

“As you like.”

“Would you like to join? I daresay you could use a new coat too.”

“No.” He seemed to recollect himself, remember who he was speaking with. “Thank you,” he added.

They made love in their effort to pretend. It made everything fine for a moment. He groaned out her name as she took him in her mouth, moving her head up and down as his cock grew harder between her lips. He tugged her off after a few minutes, stammering he wanted to finish inside her, with her. The last part of that hadn’t happened. He’d finished her off with his mouth after and they laid tangled on the bed. It had been good and real. When Joan woke in the morning, however, he had untangled himself from her and was propped, already awake, on his pillow. He was looking towards her vanity.

Mid-month, Joan decided it was time to change tactics. Pretending it did not exist was not working, so Joan decided they would talk about it instead.

She cornered John at school in his office. There was some sense, probably false, that it would be easier to talk the further away they were from the watch. The look on his face when he called for her to come in after her knock and he realized it was her, not a teacher or student, lowered her spirits. Joan shut the door behind her, leaning against it.

“This isn’t working, John. Whatever we’re doing, trying to tiptoe around the matter. I think we must talk about it.”

He chewed on his lip for a moment. “How?”

“You could tell me your thoughts, where they are?”

“I’m...I’m not sure how.”

“What do you mean?” She kept her voice level. If they were going to talk about it, it needed to be a conversation, not an argument. “You can’t tell me? I’m your wife.”

“I shouldn’t have held it. We did that, and now...I can’t stop hearing it. It’s like whatever was making voices fuzzy is gone. They’re clear and they’re telling me to open the watch.”

Fear rushed like a physical sensation down Joan’s spine to her fingertips and feet. She shivered at the feel of it.

“I’m frightened, Joan.”

She looked at him. He looked back.

There were no other words. Whatever she planned to say, hoped to talk through, it was all gone now. She knew how to be his support, to console him, to reason with him. This was beyond her. Protecting him. She did not know how to do that. In fact, she suspected she was not strong enough.

\- - -

As she poured tea into John’s cup a few days later, Joan said quietly, “I’ve invited Martha to come and stay for a few days.”

John nodded. He was behind his newspaper and her tone had been offhand enough she doubted he’d actually listened to it.

“She’ll be arriving tomorrow around noon.”

“Who will?”

“Martha.”

The paper immediately came away from his face. “ _What?_ ”

“I’ve invited Martha to come and stay with us for a few days. Her train comes in-”

“No, no, I heard what you said. I’m just...confused. I didn’t think you...the two of you...didn’t get on?”

Joan shrugged and poured her own tea. She went to the door and called the children inside to eat. “And take your boots off before you come in or you’ll track mud all over the floors.” She came back to sit at the table. John was still holding the newspaper, folded back over his hand so the top corner was dipped in the milk, and looking at her, incredulous.

"We got on well when she visited three years ago."

There was a clamoring as the children came in, shouting and removing their outerwear.

"So this is to be a social visit?" John asked.

"I think we should talk with her."

“No, Joan, definitely not-”

The children settled noisily around the table, claiming biscuits and sandwiches and clattering their dishes.

John lowered his voice before continuing, “I do not want her here. Not now.”

Her voice similarly hushed, Joan said, “I don’t know what to do, John. All of this, it is so far from what I know and don’t think I can help you. We need someone who knows about this and Martha is the only person who does.”

“Did you tell her?” His face was the same greyish white as the newspaper still in his hands.

“Yes.”

Finally dropping the paper, he rose from the table and strode over so he was facing the wall. The children were silent, watching him. “She’ll come anyway then, won’t she?” John muttered. “Surprised she’s not here already.” He whirled back around. “You know what she’ll say, don’t you? That’s what you want?” His words were no longer quiet. “We only just came to the point where she didn’t tell me how far superior that Doctor is to me every time she saw me. Why would you invite her here? Without...without telling me? I am your husband! We share in these decisions. I thought you knew that. You have asked me over and over to tell you what I am thinking, but you go and do this without me.”

“I’m sorry, John, but-”

“How sorry do you think you’ll be when Martha gets here tomorrow? All these years you’ve been arguing with her about me and now she’s your...your what?”

“I’m sorry,” Joan said, speaking loud enough to make herself heard over him, “but I didn’t know what to do. It’s been _two months_ and we are dancing around the issue. How much longer are we going to let it go on this way?”

He covered his eyes with his hand, his breathing loud in the tense silence. The children were frozen in their seats. Stella was crying silently.

“Sorry,” murmured Joan. Her chair squealed when she pushed it back and her shoes clacked as she left the room.

She heard, as she climbed the stairs, John’s muffled words to Stella as he consoled the three children. He was right about Martha and what she would say, most likely the moment she came through the door. Joan was almost surprised her answering telegram hadn’t advised them to open the watch immediately. But Joan knew all that. She had spent more than a month thinking about it, trying to come up with anything else.

There was nothing else. No one else. Besides herself, there were three other people in the entire world who would believe what the pocket watch contained. Martha, of course. Timothy Latimer, though she couldn’t talk to him, not when he was a former student. And John.

Joan was alone.

By the time Martha knocked on the door the next morning, Joan was composed. She had seen the children off to school, and John, both of them acting as if the previous day hadn’t happened, as was their new custom. There was bread cooling on the oven and the house was neat. Of course, all of that was lost on Martha as she bustled into the parlor exclaiming, “Where did you find it?”

“Can I take your bags?” Joan asked. “We’ve put all the children in the nursery, so you’ll have the back bedroom.”

“Where’s John?”

“He’s at work. Would you like to have a seat?”

“Is he alright?”

“What do you think?”

Martha nodded and took the seat Joan offered. Something in Joan’s words or manner had sobered her. While she still nearly vibrated in her seat with excitement, she did not ask any more questions. She waited for Joan to speak.

And Joan suddenly realized, in all of her thinking and planning and worrying, she never decided what she wanted to say. Now, as Martha watched her expectantly, Joan whispered, “He isn’t gone, but I feel like I have already lost him.”

When Martha took her hand, Joan flinched. She had not been paying attention, and they had never had any physical contact before. She didn’t pull away though, and after a moment, she pressed on Martha’s hand to show her thanks.

“Is he going to open the watch?” Martha asked.

Joan lifted a shoulder and let out a breath. “No, I don’t think so. But you know how he is. He’s worried about you and the Doctor-”

“-the rest of humanity-”

“-and the children. He doesn’t want to be selfish, but he doesn’t know how.”

“And you?” said Martha. “What do you think?”

“I have no qualms about being selfish. If he hadn’t been there when Stella found the watch, I would have had it melted down. I still would if I knew it wouldn’t destroy his trust.” Joan took her hand from Martha’s and gripped her knees through her dress. “This is his life. He chose this. And it’s only that…” She felt the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to cry in front of Martha, yet swiping angrily at her eyes didn’t seem to help.

“I have to ask,” said Martha, “but why call me? You know what I think about it. We’ve never really gotten on and I’m pretty sure we’re going to disagree on this.”

“Because you said the Doctor would come back and I’m worried you were right. He needs someone who knows. Someone who is not me. I’m not enough, not in this.”

“Oh, Joan-”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t pity me. I will not lose him. John has a responsibility to us, me and our children.”

“But he has other-”

“No. He doesn’t. The Doctor does. I don’t know why everyone keeps getting that confused.”

Martha sighed. It was a tired noise with no real emotion behind it.

“I will not lose John,” Joan said again. “But we cannot go on the way we are. He needs to come to terms with his past and you, and you know your Doctor best. You have to make him understand that it is alright to be John Smith.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Please, just talk to him. Tell him whatever he wants to know about the Doctor and what he does. Let him draw his conclusions.”

“You know what I will have to tell him, don’t you? About people suffering while he’s living this story book life.”

“You are going to try to convince a man to leave his wife and three children?”

Martha dully watched Joan with the corners of her mouth turned down. “To help the entire universe, yeah?” The words sounded rote. She had her teeth gritted as she said them and Joan doubted even Martha believed them.

“What would your Doctor think of that?”

“He didn’t!” Martha shouted. She jumped to her feet with a hand pressed to her forehead. There was no more righteous pretense as she cried, “That’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the whole problem! The idiot didn’t consider the idea that he might fall in love or lose the goddamn watch. He thinks he’s so brilliant and then he puts a perception filter on the thing that holds his entire life. Three months, he said.” She quieted. “After two months, I knew he’d messed it up, gone and fallen in love. Now it’s been ten years.”

“Do you still love him?”

“No.” Martha huffed out a humorless laugh. “I felt so guilty. Thought it was my fault that we got stuck here. But it’s not. He left me.” A moment later, she clarified, “The Doctor, not John.”

“Why did you come then? If it isn’t about keeping the universe safe anymore?”

“Because I want to go home. He owes me that. You see,” Martha said sadly, “I can be selfish too. I’ve spent all these years trying to help people. Just something to offset the...Doctor-shaped hole in the universe. But I don’t care anymore. I just want to go home.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You have to see why I can’t talk to him. All I can ask is that he leaves you and the children for me. I don’t want to be responsible that. I can be selfish, but that...Don’t make me talk to him, Joan.”


	23. November 1924

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martha returns.

Martha declined Joan’s offer to put her up at the inn in town so she might avoid seeing John. Joan didn’t press for a reason behind her refusal and instead prepared dinner for all of them. She half thought John might stay at the school to avoid seeing Martha, but he came home at his usual time and greeted Martha with the pleasantries and inquiries about her trip that Joan had overlooked earlier in the day. If Joan’s preparation for Martha’s visit was to clean the house and bake bread, John’s was to rely on his social niceties and pretend this was no more than a visit between friends.

Dinner was not as uncomfortable as Joan expected. Martha talked with the children, asking after their classes at school and their games. She caught them up with her travels and her work over the past two years. She had spent a good deal of the time in America and on the continent. Given the presence of the children, she kept to stories of sights she saw on her travels, but Joan heard what she did not say. Martha had been searching for the same things as always.

Joan took the children to the nursery after dinner and snuck the watch in her pocket before she came back downstairs to find Martha and John conversing quietly over coffee in the parlor.

“How much do they know?” Martha was asking.

“Stella was the one who found it,” John said, “so they know that was the start of it. I don’t know how much else they’ve been able to put together. I think Margaret’s begun to realize the stories I told them might be true.”

Joan sat next to John. At first, on instinct, his hand came up to her shoulder before he drew it away as if scorched. His head snapped to her.

“You have the watch,” he said, his look alarmed and betrayed at once.

She pulled it from her pocket and set it on the table where the three of them watched it as if it might scamper off. It stayed firmly in place.

“Do you still hear it?” Joan asked because she didn’t know how else to introduce this conversation none of them wanted to have. She saw Martha shift in surprise, but she didn’t say anything.

“Yes.” He reached forward to grab the watch. They all seemed to take a collective gasp as he picked it up. “It wants me to open it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, a simple perception filter. Probably fractured when I touched it the first time knowing who I was.”

They all froze.

That was not John’s voice.

“Is that how he talks?” John asked. He reached for Joan’s hand and sought her eyes with his wide, desperate ones.

“That’s him,” Martha said, sitting straighter despite her resigned tone.

John set the watch down. “If I open this watch, and the Doctor comes back, I die. Is that right?”

“‘Fraid so,” said Martha. Her lightness didn’t lighten the conversation. John gaped at her. “Yes. It must be one or the other of you.”

“But if the Doctor is somewhere inside John,” Joan said, “then wouldn’t John be somewhere in the Doctor if they switched back? What if John opened the watch, and then, Martha, he could take you home, and then the Doctor could bring John back?”

“He wouldn’t.” John shook his head. “That’s not him. I know enough about him to know that.”

The thought struck Joan, abrupt and cold. That man in John’s dream, who looked like him but wasn’t, standing alone watching a star burn up. “He chooses to be lonely.” She said it with certainty.

“He thinks he deserves to,” John said.

Their eyes met and what she saw there belied the calmness of his words. They spoke of someone else, but she knew he saw the memories before him as if they were his own.

“I begin to understand why he ran.” Joan smiled gently at no one in particular. “I begin to hate him less for it.”

“Do you wonder why he wants to go back to it though?” Martha asked.

“Does he?”

“The watch seems to think so.”

“But what do you think, John? Clearly he’s in there somewhere.” Joan motioned vaguely at John’s form. “We just heard him. Is he...Does he truly want to go back?”

“He has to.”

“But does _he_ want to?”

John didn’t answer, letting his head drop. As they watched, the gentle rising and falling of his back turned to shaking and he leaned further forward, his elbows planted on his thighs. Joan reached for him. When he didn’t react to it, she went further, dragging him up so she could put her arms about him, hold him against her.

“And you, John, what do you want?”

The sobs broke from him. “I-I-” Gasping breaths claimed his words as his hand fisted in Joan’s skirt. She pet his hair. In all the weeks since they found the watch, he had never broken down, at least not in front of her. She wondered how often he wanted to. Needed to.

“John?”

She rubbed his back, willing her own breathing level and finding it easy. The watch she could not help with, nor the Doctor or the needs of the universe. But what John wanted and needed was familiar to her. She was surprised she had not realized that over the past two months. She had become well practiced in seeing John and the Doctor as one in the same, the Doctor a strange story in John’s past. Now she had to separate them again.

“I don’t want to die.”

She turned to Martha, intending to ask her to leave them for some privacy, but her face held so much pity that Joan’s words left her. Over John’s head, the women watched each other and Joan was struck again by their strange connection, the same way she had been all those years ago when John chose this life and love and marriage and Martha left.

The same feeling stole over her now, an understanding they shared in regarding the man between them. They still wanted different things, though, Joan reflected, they were more alike now than they had been ten years ago. Time had changed them, and John, but not their intertwined fates. Those seemed to draw ever tighter.

Martha rose and left the room. Her footsteps echoed as she climbed the stairs. Joan waited until she heard the faint snick of Martha’s door closing. Then she leaned forward, resting her chin in John’s soft hair, and said, “You don’t have to. You can stay. Fuck the universe.” The words were murmured as if the universe might strike them down if it heard.

But the words were out and they were still sitting on the sofa in their living room and John was chuckling wetly at hearing Joan swear.


	24. December 1924

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decisions must be made. This is a longer chapter, and it is also nsfw.

Martha was gone the next morning by the time they woke, though she left some of her things behind. John smiled at the breakfast table, laughing at something his son said about school. Joan felt like she took a full breath for the first time in two months as she poured the coffee.

They went back to not talking about the things that were too heavy for them to consider. The watch was returned to Joan’s vanity drawer. There were still no jokes to be made, no comments about John’s adventures, no stories for the children, but there were conversations over dinner as November turned to December, and tea times in the afternoons. There were smiles and love and a Christmas tree and garlands.

And then Martha returned. She brought Timothy Latimer.

The two of them appeared outside the front door on the morning of Christmas Eve, bundled up against an unexpected snow and holding a thick envelope. The envelope disappeared after they had been shown in, stowed with the things Martha had left during her hasty departure weeks ago. It was not mentioned as they sat for dinner, talking and laughing. Tim had a job teaching at a school in the north. He had a family as well, a wife, son, and daughter. They were staying with his mother-in-law not far from here and he would leave tomorrow at noon to return to them.

“I apologize that you are missing Christmas morning with them,” Joan said.

“Dad,” Margaret interrupted, “can you tell us about the Sycorax tonight like you did last Christmas?”

“John has taken to telling the children stories from magazi—Oh, nevermind. You already know,” Joan sighed with a shake of her head.

As the last bites of food disappeared from plates, Martha asked, “Can I help you with the dishes, Joan?”

There was a moment in which every fork paused and they all raised their heads. Even the children held still and, though no one was a stranger at the table, a sense of distrust surrounded them. John gave Joan the slightest of nods.

“Yes, thank you,” Joan said.

She wondered if that was part of their plan, Martha and Tim. Get John away from her, separate them, to assail him with whatever they meant to say. The envelope she had nearly forgotten flashed through her mind.

It seemed, however, to have been an honest offer to help with the chores. Joan had to concede that as she and Martha stood in almost comfortable silence drying the dishes. Past the door, she could pick out John’s and Latimer’s deeper voices amongst the children’s, talking about teaching. She distinctly heard John laugh.

“Why have you come, Martha?” Joan asked, hushed. “Why bring Tim?”

“One last attempt.”

“He’s not going to change back.”

Martha shrugged. “Taking me home might not be enough reason for him, but we found something we think might.”

“What is it?”

“We’ll show you after dinner.”

Joan didn’t know if Tim had said something similar to John. Her husband’s face was wary when he entered the parlor that evening and came right to Joan’s side, sitting so there was no space between them. The closeness felt protective, even as she knew he was seeking her as a shield.

The envelope had returned. It laid on the coffee table.

“Before you make me open that,” John said, nodding at the package, “can I see the...the TARDIS?”

“John?”

“I know one of you has the key.”

Martha and Latimer shared a glance, as if surprised it had been so easy, while Joan felt her body tense. John felt it too. He reached behind her and placed a steady hand on the small of her back.

“I have it,” she said. “It’s in my jewelry box.”

Their footsteps crunched on the snowy ground as they walked along the deserted streets. Joan had known all these years where the ship was, but she’d never ventured out to see it. There had been no reason. In fact, she had not walked out here in more than a decade. There were more homes now. She was surprised Martha never felt the need to move the thing as the countryside built up around it.

When they came to the barn where it lived, she understood. If Martha hadn’t been leading them, Joan would have walked right past, suddenly struck by a sense of disinterest and remembering half a dozen other tasks she needed to do. This must have been that perception filter, like was on the watch. Glancing around, she saw the others weren’t affected. They were staring right at the barn door as Martha unlocked it, their eyes jumping to the blue ship as soon as the door was open.

John took two steps forward and stopped. His posture was ramrod, his shoulders pushed back. When he looked over his shoulder and held out his hand for the key, he kept his face blank. Joan dropped the key into his palm.

It was hard for her to focus on the blue box. She found it less disorienting to watch John, let the box come into focus as he got closer to it. By the time he fitted the key into the lock, she could see it clearly.

The paint had not faded or weathered. The white words were still bright. When he pushed open the door, a low light fell across the barn’s dirt floor. All this time and it seemed the ship was still ready to take flight.

Martha walked forward next, almost as soon as John disappeared inside, and Tim followed after, his expression bright with curiosity. The sounds of them inside — footsteps on metal, gentle murmurs — echoed out the open door to Joan. She glanced back at her quiet village and found she could see the school from here. John had told her once as they laid together after making love, several years on in their marriage, that the Doctor’s spaceship had chosen this story for him, not the Doctor. He’d seen that fact in a dream once and thought it highly amusing. Joan had remarked that a glorified aeroplane had brought her a husband.

Had that ship landed here on purpose? Had it known about the widowed nurse? Had it heard in the call of her lonely soul a companion for its alien captain?

Or had the ship landed at random, seen that school, and fit a story?

Joan crossed the barn and stepped into the doorway of the box without letting herself think. She pushed the door wider.

When Martha had tried to drag John inside after they defeated that Family, Joan had glimpsed the inside. She had seen it in John’s dreams when they touched the watch. She knew it was somehow bigger on the inside than it appeared. Still the sight held her in place, wavering in the doorway between a simple wooden barn and the cavernous interior of a spaceship. It was dark, the ceiling lost in the shadows. Only a dim blue light, emitted by a column over the console in the center of the room, revealed the three people walking about in front of her. She could pick out which was John as he walked behind the console, disappearing from her view.

Before she walked forward, Joan put her hands into her pockets. The watch was there. She had taken it when she fetched the TARDIS key without knowing why. It’s warmth beneath her fingers seemed to make her skin tingle.

“It’s like I pictured,” John said, emerging from the other side of the console. He had his hands in his pockets and he slowly turned on his heel, swiveling his head as if he was in a museum. He tapped at something on the console. It didn’t have any effect.

“Do you know how to fly it?” Martha asked.

“No.” When he was met with silence, he added, “Some of the memories are there, but not enough to get us anywhere safely. Now,” he leaned against the edge of the console, facing out, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s in the envelope?”

“I’ve been all over the past ten years,” Martha said, the words like a carefully rehearsed script. “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve collected stories. Stories where people needed the Doctor. Aliens, disasters, anything. I have hundreds.”

“I found some too,” added Tim. “Actually they seem to find me. I’ve seen what the Doctor can do,” he nodded toward Joan, or rather Joan’s pocket. She reached reflexively for the watch, realizing it was silly to think she could be secretive with these three. “He’s terrible and he’s wonderful. And I’ve seen moments where he was needed and he’s not here.”

“We put everything into that envelope. Believe me, I know what you’ll have to leave if you let the Doctor come back and I can’t make the choice for you. I can’t even ask you because I’m biased. I just want to go home. But, Doctor, there are things out there bigger than all this. People that need you.”

“Martha?”

“Yeah?”

“Was he lonely?”

Martha nodded.

In the beginning, Joan knew, Martha would have argued with that. She would have explained that was why she was there. Joan imagined she had, although she couldn’t remember everything that happened that evening all those years ago. Today, as John asked, Martha’s answer was weary. No longer concerned with failure or jealousy.

John’s attention had shifted between the two of them while they told him what they had done. Now it moved to Joan. Wordlessly, he reached out a hand to ask her to come stand beside him. She complied. He didn’t take her hand when she reached him, or even touch her. He simply stood by her side. From this close, she could hear him clear his throat.

“I will not be opening the watch. I am John Smith, and his place is here. My apologies to the universe, but I will leave that to braver men.”

Joan whirled on him, knew she was gaping. Before she could speak, he was moving away from her, towards Martha where she slumped in on herself, her arms wrapped tightly around and her eyes closed. She was nodding and didn’t stop as John took her by the elbows.

Leaning close, he said quietly, “I think I can get you home, Martha.”

Martha’s eyes flew open. “What?”

“ _What?_ ” Joan echoed.

“I’ve done some research of my own. All those dreams I had, I wrote them down.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “There was his...his friend...Rose, she was called. He sent her home without him. There’s an emergency protocol. He didn’t need to fly the TARDIS, only activate it. I think there’s enough of him in me that I can set that off and send you home.”

It was good John held Martha by the elbows. When she heard that, her knees seemed to give out. As it was, he had to readjust his grip on her, wrap an arm around her waist to hold her upright.

“You-” Her own breath interrupted her, a mix of laughter and sobs and panting. “You could do that?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.”

“But Doctor,” she said, sobering, “if you do that, you’ll be stuck here. There’ll be no way for you to get back.”

“Yes, I know.”

Joan saw him smile. It wasn’t a look she could place. Certainly not his schoolboy grin or a sad smile. She realized as it faded it was a smile she had never seen before. He said he wasn’t changing back, but there was something about him she did not recognize.

“Where is that thing he had, that-” John made a sort of fist “-screwdriver, wasn’t it?”

“Sonic screwdriver. Yeah, um...Yeah, it’s there, in the pocket of your coat.”

John wandered to a long coat draped over a railing and fished through the pockets. The thing he withdrew was the same one Martha had thrust at them on their first date when she begged John to remember who he was. This time, he took it without hesitation, studying it with the distant interest he’d shown when walking about the TARDIS. He fiddled with the buttons on it and aimed it at different things around the room as if seeing what it might do.

“Do you have anything you need to do before you go back?” John asked as he took another lap around the console, disappearing from their vision for a moment. “Any belongings you need to fetch?”

“No, nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Martha, you…” Joan fell silent as Martha turned to her and away again just as quickly. She knew, as Joan realized, that there was nothing to be said. Nothing that properly recognized what had and had not been between the two of them and John for ten years. There were no words worth Martha’s desire to be home with her family.

“Alright then.” John reappeared with a questioning glance at both of them. When he found only Martha watching him in wary expectation and Joan looking on sadly, he stretched out his arm, the bizarre screwdriver pointed at a screen on the console. “Martha Jones, thank you.” His thumb flicked the thing on.

A look of alarm and fondness swept over Martha’s face as if she only just realized everything was ending. She looked young. The ten years of weariness and frustration turned to the love she had once felt for the man, turned to sadness at the thought of leaving him.

John murmured something to Martha, some word or small phrase, but the low buzz of the screwdriver drowned it out so only he and Martha heard it. What little light there was glinted off the tear on Martha’s cheek.

An image appeared, off to the side, of the man that was not John, life size and dimensional, but clearly an illusion this time. Joan didn't have time to observe it or hear it speak before John was tugging on her hand, ushering her and Tim from the box, back out into the barn. They were hardly out when the noise started, a rhythmic mechanical whoosh Joan couldn’t quite compare to anything she’d heard before.

John pulled her away until she planted her feet and turned back to watch. When he realized her couldn’t move her, he put his arm protectively between her and the blue box as it faded away before their eyes, growing fainter and fainter until it ceased to exist. All that was left of it in the dusty barn was a faint impression in the mouldering straw where it had stood. The three of them fixated on that spot, Latimer with open interest, John with his brow creased, and Joan in outright shock.

Not shock that a physical object had vanished. She had been inside of it a moment ago, and now it was gone, and yet that felt like a distant oddity.

Rather the shock was for the hasty goodbye from the woman who vanished with the box. For more than ten years, whether physically present or not, whether hated or tolerated or respected, there was Martha. She was the only one who shared both John’s past and present stories, at least to some extent. And now she was gone. Without any more than a quick few words, she was gone.

It felt like she had taken the Doctor with her. She took his means of escape anyway.

The thought should have made Joan ecstatic. Maybe it would later, she thought. Martha and all her reasons John Smith should be replaced by the Doctor, those were gone. His ship was gone. She felt numb and cold. Perhaps tonight, while she was laying in bed, John curled around her, she would find herself glad. When she knew it was truly her husband beside her because this man hardly seemed like him. This man with his careless certainty and his emergency protocols and strange smiles was nearly unrecognizable.

She put her hands into her pockets.

“John?” There was only so far her hands could go, but she pressed her fingertips against the seams of her pockets, her nails catching the lint there. “John, the watch is gone!”

“No, darling, it’s here.” John showed her his open palm with the watch and the TARDIS key on its string. “Do you want to put these to put back in your jewelry box?”

Joan stared at the objects in his hand. They looked the same as they always had, silver and nondescript. Raising her gaze, up his arm and neck and onto his face, she found him watching her with innocent expectancy. His eyes, not the Doctor’s. He might have been holding a simple watch and key.

“No” she replied. “Thank you.”

“Let’s go home, then.” He slipped the watch and key back in his pocket and offered her his now empty hand, leading her back out into the snowy night with Tim following behind. The sky had turned clear and the air biting. A full moon glinted off the snow to light their way until they were close enough to the village the streetlamps reappeared. For the most part they walked in silence, save for John asking if Joan was warm enough and Tim saying he thought he could catch the last train of the evening if he hurried.

Only when they turned onto their street did Tim add, “I recommend that you do not look in that envelope, Mr. Smith. It won’t do you any good now. In fact I’m sorry we compiled it at all knowing that you had already made your mind up to stay. Martha seemed so certain that showing you the people suffering was the only way she convince you to take her back.”

“Martha had it backwards,” John said softly. “The only reason I would have brought the Doctor back was to take her home.”

Joan wrapped her arms about his, pulling herself into his warmth before she caught sight of the light on in the upstairs window. “We left the children!” she exclaimed. She would have taken off at a run, but John kept her firmly by at his side.

“They’re fine. Probably asleep. Latimer, do you need any help getting to the station?”

“Thanks, but I’ve got it.” He pulled out his own watch to check the time. “The two of you ought to get to sleep. It’s nearly Christmas and I imagine your children will be up bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“Quite,” John murmured.

They didn’t hurry though. John saw Tim off as Joan made sure the children were in their beds. They had fallen asleep sprawled on the nursery floor, too distracted by the game they’d been playing to find their beds. Once she’d woken them to move them, Stella assumed it was time for presents and it took Joan half an hour and several threats to get them back to sleep again.

By the time she closed the door to the nursery behind her, she was surprised to still see lights on downstairs.

“John?” she called, wandering from room to room. “John?” She looked into the living room and found him.

He’d opened the envelope.

Its contents were strewn on the coffee table and the sofa and floor beneath. News clippings, photographs, pages crammed with scrawled writing, little trinkets. John held what looked like a typewritten report so tightly she expected it to tear in half. He looked up when he heard Joan enter the room.

There was the man she knew. This expression was the one she had expected when he sent Martha into the future, this need for reassurance when he confidently declared he was not going to open the watch. His mouth hung open, his eyes shone. He had been leaning forward to read and did not straighten now, leaving his shoulders hunched over his chest as his head came up.

“God, John, why did you open it?” she muttered even as she went to sit beside him, taking him into her arms without hesitation. “There’s no sense in regretting it now.”

He buried his face at her neck, making her skin damp from his tears and warm breath. There were stammered words, but Joan did not need to hear them to know he spoke of payment and forgiveness and debts owed to the universe. She rubbed his arm and whispered that everything would be alright, that she loved him, that he had made the right choice.

“What have I done?” he moaned, the words muffled by her skin.

She couldn’t answer. And, truly, it didn’t matter. What he had done was over. They now could only look forward. Joan felt she understood why she had not felt relief when the TARDIS disappeared with Martha. She expected this was coming, that, decision made, John would now have to find out how to live with it. She was not frightened about it though. Decisions, once made, had to be lived with. That was the way of them. He would learn to live with this too. Eventually.

“You and him are sometimes so alike,” she said. He still cried, but she sensed he listened. “You and he both think it falls to either of you to save the world. It doesn’t. If he didn’t know that when he ran, if he was just running coward, he must know it now.”

“Yes, I think he…I can still hear the watch. I’ll always hear it.”

She ran a hand through his hair. “It takes a certain kind of boldness to be John Smith, doesn’t it? To know that all you can do for the universe are small acts and to know that is not weakness. It isn’t any less important. In many ways, you are braver than him.”

“You have become quite the sage,” he said, his voice still weak.

“They’re your words. I’m only repeating them.”

They fell asleep there, him nestled between her and the back of the sofa and his limbs draped over her, his body heat keeping her warm. He woke her sometime in the early morning, no longer crying but simply running his hand up and down her side. It was not yet light out, but the still lit Christmas tree gave her enough light to see him by when she looked over her shoulder, to see there were no more tears around his swollen eyes.

“Joan?” he murmured. “Do you want to go up to bed?”

“I’m fine here.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

He bent forward to kiss her, gently nipping at her bottom lip and opening his mouth for her. She would have expected his movements to be frenzied after his emotion earlier, but perhaps they were too tired for that. He moved languorously, like there was no rush. When her neck started to hurt from twisting to kiss him, she turned away and let his lips trail over her ear and onto the back of her neck. His pace never changed as he alternated soft touches of his lips and brushes of his nose, not even as he reached down to draw up her skirt with patient purpose. She she arched her hips back and he deftly undid the buttons on her knickers. There was no need for words. Their bodies knew these steps.

His fingers trailed through her slick folds with the same caressing touch as his kisses, firm and slow. He slipped one finger and then another into her and the measured thrusts made her grind her hips against him, pressing against his hardness, begging for more without asking.

The kisses on the back of her neck stopped, replaced with gusting breaths as he pulled his fingers from her. She whimpered.

“Shh, love, shh.”

The words did not hide the rustle as he undid the buttons of his trousers and his drawers. Did not hide the whisper of his palm on his cock in the moment before he pushed into her. It was still slow, tortuously so, but when she tried to meet his thrusts, he stilled her with a hand on her hip and continued to move as if morning would never come, as if the years would never advance.

It came on steadily, the pleasure, when it did finally come. He seemed to drag it out from deep within her, pushing her higher until, with another thrust, the climax tore through her. She didn’t cry out at it. Couldn’t cry out. It was too much.

Minutes later, when she came back to herself, she realized he was still buried in her, fully hard, and hesitating.

“Go on,” she breathed.

This time, his deliberate movements took on a tinge of desperation. They grew faster and then frantic. His breath at her ear bordered on words, but the pleas were never quite voiced.

“John.”

He stilled. His forehead collided with the back of her head as he groaned in frustration.

Joan rolled over. It was not easy with so little space, but he had an arm about her to save her from falling to the floor as she raised her leg and threw it over his. When she was securely at his side again, face to face, she placed a hand on his cheek. With her other hand, she reached down for his cock and guided it back inside her.

“That’s right, John, come on.”

He began to move again, shallowly this time, but deeper now, their bodies flush every time he bottomed out inside her. She swiped a stray tear off his cheek with her thumb.

“Yes, John, that’s it. I love you. Come for me, John. Yes, there, like that-”

With her name on a strangled groan, he came.

He panted nonsense in the aftermath, chanting, “Thank you, thank you,” under his breath as his lips returned to her face and her neck, his hands to her side. And then he fell asleep, his lips still pressed to the space below her ear. Joan did not mind. She was close to dozing herself, lulled by his gentle caresses and warm embrace.

They could talk tomorrow if they ever got the children to bed after the thrill of presents and too much food. Or they could not talk. Not tomorrow anyway. They had the rest of their lives to talk . Maybe tomorrow they could sneak back up to John’s office at the school. It would be empty now the holidays had come. Maybe they would talk there anyway, take tea and sit and talk and laugh. She would tease him about his stories. He would call her beautiful and stumble over the words in his eagerness.

Yes, she would propose that when they woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea which way this was going to go until I wrote it. Even now with it written and posted, I still wonder about it.
> 
> Just one more chapter after this! Thank you all for reading this far.


	25. June 1968

Quiet English villages were not supposed to be the backdrop for alien invasions.

John never tired of telling that story. It changed a bit over the years and now didn’t quite resemble the memory Joan had of events, but she didn’t mention it. The children knew only that their father had not always been human. The grandchildren thought the stories were entirely made up. No one needed more information about it now. John was human enough.

Unfortunately, humans died. Joan had wished once in a fit of desperation when he first got sick that he could be that immortal alien again so she would not have to watch him slowly decline. She regretted the wish instantly, even if she hadn’t spoken it aloud. John would have died to become the Doctor and instead she spent decades with him. Never would she wish for anyone but him again.

They had a caretaker since Joan was almost too old herself to look after him. The woman was off this evening though, and Joan was taking the quiet time alone to sit at John’s bedside. They moved their bed into John’s study a few years ago when it got too tiresome to go up and down the stairs all the time. At first they considered moving to a smaller house — there had long since ceased to be a reason to live close to the school — but this house was big enough for the children and grandchildren, and occasionally Timothy Latimer and his family, whenever they visited.

She had been up in their old room earlier, tidying after Stella took her daughter home and John and his wife departed with their two children. It still looked much the same. Fashions might have changed with the times, but Joan rather liked her simple bedroom. There were good memories there.

“Did Stella get home alright?” John asked.

“Yes, she called a little bit ago. Margaret did too. She’s going to come next weekend if she’s not on shift at the hospital again.”

“Is she bringing her girlfriend?”

“I assume so. I didn’t ask.”

John smirked at her and she smacked him lightly on the arm before taking his hand.

“Don’t be insufferable,” she said. “I welcome both of them into my home and only want them to be happy. It was just surprising when she told us is all. Things have changed so since I was young.”

He chuckled. “You fell in love with an alien from a different planet. Margaret’s choice is human.”

“You are as human as I am, dearest.”

At that moment, a fit of coughing took him, reminding Joan just how human he was. She helped him onto his side, patting him on the back to help him through it. Finally, trembling slightly, he settled.

“Stella got home safe?” he asked when he caught his breath, his voice gravelly after the coughing.

Even as her eyes stung, Joan felt her smile, small and tenuous. She let him see it and swallowed back the tears. Those would have to be for later.

“Yes, John.”

“They’re all safe, aren’t they? The children, the grandchildren? Everyone’s safe.”

“Everyone’s safe,” Joan assured him. Her own words were steady even as she realized Margaret would not make it here in time. She wondered if he was thinking that too, or if his thoughts were already miles away. It was impossible to tell anymore. Still, she added, “They all send their love, John.”

“Well, then it’s time.” He said it to himself, his gaze drifting. Joan let her head drop, cursing one last time his distractible nature and the way it stole his thoughts away when she was there and present. His grip was weak enough that she only noticed he squeezed her hand as he murmured, his tone sure, “Thank you.”

She smiled again.

“Could I have more water?” he asked.

“Of course.” She stood and took the glass from the table, then bent to kiss him softly. “I’ll be right back.”

Halfway to the kitchen, Joan realized her smile had not faded. Now would be the time to cry and she found she could not. Did not need to. Later maybe, in the days and weeks that followed this moment, surrounded by family and friends who offered their condolences and sent flowers. It might set in then that she was alone, the man she loved gone. For this day, she was content. She was loved and had been loved for all these decades. She had cost the universe a great man and never once regretted it. If she had ever remarked on the selfishness of that, John would have said she was too bold and practical to bother with such a thing as regret.

She filled the glass at the tap and gazed out into the garden. The setting sun glinted through the summer leaves, evening gnats shown silver above the overgrown grass. She turned off the tap.

At first, she thought the noise she heard was the hum of the fridge, but it was too loud. She thought about an aeroplane although they never flew low enough and the sound was all wrong. She got to her toes so she could lean over the sink to see out the window. The garden was as it had been a moment ago.

The noise stopped.

Joan shrugged and made her way back to John’s room. He was not there.

She stared at the empty bed, the rumpled sheets. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe what she was seeing; this was far past the point in her life where she accepted unimaginable things without batting an eye. Understanding took longer.

She remembered where she had heard that sound before.

She opened the top drawer of John’s dresser, rifled through his ties and handkerchiefs. There was no key. That key had always been in here. Usually it sat amongst his tie pins and cufflinks. He’d said it seemed ridiculous to keep so important a key stashed in a drawer, but it was completely useless, so perhaps it was more ridiculous to keep it at all.

It was the same with the watch, only they kept that on the mantle in the parlor.

The watch was not there now either.

Joan flung open the front door and strode out into the garden. Again she was not shocked to see that blue box sitting between the trees on the far side of the street. All the same, she froze at the sight. And laughed.

They had seen one of the stupid blue boxes for police during a trip to London years ago and laughed themselves silly at the thought of the Doctor flying through space in it. Before that day, she always thought it's appearance had some alien importance. Once she knew what it truly was, she teased him about it endlessly.

She thought of that now, and all the smiles they shared, and had to clutch her stomach as she doubled over laughing. Her sides hurt with it. She laughed until her breath ran out and her chest heaved silently. Only when the laughter turned to tears did she straighten.

There was another memory, unblurred by time, of the night they sent Martha home. Of John wandering around the ship, pressing buttons and pulling levers with detached interest. Of him disappearing from her sight, for two instants, behind the column in the center of the console. Had he done this? Or had Martha found a way to send the TARDIS back for him? Did it matter anymore?

The door of the box clicked open, the squeak of its hinges high enough that she heard it even from here. It opened enough for someone to step through. The man who did was not John. It didn’t even look like him this time.

But there was something about the schoolboy grin the man gave her, in his unspoken acknowledgement of her nod of thanks, that made her think of John Smith and his impossible stories and of travelling in the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and the comments and kudos! I'm a little sad we're at the end, but I had a great time writing and sharing with you all.


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